OK, it wasn't quite the powder day that I'd expected, but it still beat the pants off last Sunday.
They dropped the rope on Ballroom and Baldy shoulder for the first time after Thursday night's storm just as we were ascending the Collins chair for our first time today. We stopped atop the lift to snap a photo or two for this report and...doh!...I had left my camera's memory card at home in the card reader. #-o Marc C to the rescue, with his camera. The pictures today were thus taken by him.
For the first run we traversed out across Ballroom and dropped into Tombstone. Oh, man...this wasn't the light fluff that I was counting on! Thursday night's precip apparently fell a bit wet, then the 45 mph gusts yesterday did its trick. Heavy, uneven snow with invisible hard bumps underneath. I kept getting thrown fore and aft, and it wasn't pretty. I stopped halfway down, regrouped myself, and finished the run with some acceptable turns. Not good ones, mind you, but acceptable ones.
We then went out the backside to Susie's Trees which, while still uneven, were a bit more palatable. You had to watch your exposure, for yesterday's sun did a number on things, too. The trick of the day seemed to be to stick close to the side of evergreens where shadows and their wind break helped to keep the snow decent.
One trip we made today which I had never done before was way, way out in the Catherine's Area, to Catherine's Pass proper. We paused to stare off into Brighton in Big Cottonwood Canyon, and to watch some backcountry skiers head OB down into Catherine's Lake, then back up to the ridgeline. We were standing where the red mark is on this topo, looking east:
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?z=12&n= ... ayer=DRG25
The snow over there looked divine, but as neither Marc nor I had any avi gear with us (and I failed to check the avi report this morning) we opted to stay inbounds and save that run for another day.
I was tired early. By 2 pm, after 14,125 vertical feet, I turned to Marc and asked, "Would you be terribly offended if I called it a day?"
He replied, "Ya know, I was just thinking the same thing."
Tomorrow's another day, and hopefully we'll have a whole lotta new snow to enjoy. Snowfall has already moved back into the Wasatch.
They dropped the rope on Ballroom and Baldy shoulder for the first time after Thursday night's storm just as we were ascending the Collins chair for our first time today. We stopped atop the lift to snap a photo or two for this report and...doh!...I had left my camera's memory card at home in the card reader. #-o Marc C to the rescue, with his camera. The pictures today were thus taken by him.
For the first run we traversed out across Ballroom and dropped into Tombstone. Oh, man...this wasn't the light fluff that I was counting on! Thursday night's precip apparently fell a bit wet, then the 45 mph gusts yesterday did its trick. Heavy, uneven snow with invisible hard bumps underneath. I kept getting thrown fore and aft, and it wasn't pretty. I stopped halfway down, regrouped myself, and finished the run with some acceptable turns. Not good ones, mind you, but acceptable ones.
We then went out the backside to Susie's Trees which, while still uneven, were a bit more palatable. You had to watch your exposure, for yesterday's sun did a number on things, too. The trick of the day seemed to be to stick close to the side of evergreens where shadows and their wind break helped to keep the snow decent.
One trip we made today which I had never done before was way, way out in the Catherine's Area, to Catherine's Pass proper. We paused to stare off into Brighton in Big Cottonwood Canyon, and to watch some backcountry skiers head OB down into Catherine's Lake, then back up to the ridgeline. We were standing where the red mark is on this topo, looking east:
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?z=12&n= ... ayer=DRG25
The snow over there looked divine, but as neither Marc nor I had any avi gear with us (and I failed to check the avi report this morning) we opted to stay inbounds and save that run for another day.
I was tired early. By 2 pm, after 14,125 vertical feet, I turned to Marc and asked, "Would you be terribly offended if I called it a day?"
He replied, "Ya know, I was just thinking the same thing."
Tomorrow's another day, and hopefully we'll have a whole lotta new snow to enjoy. Snowfall has already moved back into the Wasatch.
