Day 63: Smooth, baby. Smooooooooooth.
With a hard refreeze overnight -- Hidden Peak was 15ºF this morning -- smooth was the order of the day. The trick would be to find terrain that hadn't been skied this week, and we found it at Alta.
Tele Jon, Bobby Danger and I convened on the Tram Plaza at 8 a.m. and headed up with patroller Steve and girlfriend Heather. Steve and Heather, however, would push off toward Mark Malou Fork as the three of us went the other way out what the TGR kiddies are now calling the "Secret Traverse" -- not that there's anything secret about it -- en route to Alta. We were momentarily diverted, however, by the terrain beneath Baldy Express, for it was a perfectly smooth, unskied base topped by an inch or two of light wind-sifted sugar. Divine.
Back up MBE, we went back out the Secret Traverse, which coincidentally was a sadistic refrozen hell today, and resumed our original plan, bootpacking up to Sugarloaf Pass where a stiff wind kept things mighty cold.
Once off the ridgeline, however, the wind calmed and we headed straight to Yellow Trail.
Perfectly smooth, perfectly untracked, it was positively, well...perfect.
We traversed across an avalanche debris-strewn Backside and instead went all the way across to Greeley Slot, finding more of the untracked smooth goodness.
Back at the base of Alta, Amy was en route up the canyon and agreed to pick us up at Goldminer's Daughter. Too bad she got pulled over speeding up the canyon. Good thing the sheriff's deputy only gave her a warning.
Taking the opportunity, we moved three vehicles up to the Wildcat lot at Alta, for it was apparent that Alta would deliver the goods today.
Our second lap was much of the same, back down Yellow Trail and this time to Greeley Hill. Good, good stuff.
At this point Amy and I would leave, as she had to catch a plane back to work in Hawaii and I was feeling rather beat. Bobby and Jon would take two more Alta laps before the close of Snowbird at 2 p.m., the last up to Sugarloaf Peak and out to Devil's Castle by traversing out behind the ridge. I hear that it was three inches or so of windsift atop a perfectly smooth base, top to bottom.
Like I said, smooth, baby. Smoooooooooth. And here's a video to prove it, the first one I've shot all year:
[skitube2]http://www.firsttracksonline.com/modules/crpVideo/pnmedia/videos/1274659789_alta-snowbird_100523.flv[/skitube2]
With a hard refreeze overnight -- Hidden Peak was 15ºF this morning -- smooth was the order of the day. The trick would be to find terrain that hadn't been skied this week, and we found it at Alta.
Tele Jon, Bobby Danger and I convened on the Tram Plaza at 8 a.m. and headed up with patroller Steve and girlfriend Heather. Steve and Heather, however, would push off toward Mark Malou Fork as the three of us went the other way out what the TGR kiddies are now calling the "Secret Traverse" -- not that there's anything secret about it -- en route to Alta. We were momentarily diverted, however, by the terrain beneath Baldy Express, for it was a perfectly smooth, unskied base topped by an inch or two of light wind-sifted sugar. Divine.
Back up MBE, we went back out the Secret Traverse, which coincidentally was a sadistic refrozen hell today, and resumed our original plan, bootpacking up to Sugarloaf Pass where a stiff wind kept things mighty cold.
Once off the ridgeline, however, the wind calmed and we headed straight to Yellow Trail.
Perfectly smooth, perfectly untracked, it was positively, well...perfect.
We traversed across an avalanche debris-strewn Backside and instead went all the way across to Greeley Slot, finding more of the untracked smooth goodness.
Back at the base of Alta, Amy was en route up the canyon and agreed to pick us up at Goldminer's Daughter. Too bad she got pulled over speeding up the canyon. Good thing the sheriff's deputy only gave her a warning.
Taking the opportunity, we moved three vehicles up to the Wildcat lot at Alta, for it was apparent that Alta would deliver the goods today.
Our second lap was much of the same, back down Yellow Trail and this time to Greeley Hill. Good, good stuff.
At this point Amy and I would leave, as she had to catch a plane back to work in Hawaii and I was feeling rather beat. Bobby and Jon would take two more Alta laps before the close of Snowbird at 2 p.m., the last up to Sugarloaf Peak and out to Devil's Castle by traversing out behind the ridge. I hear that it was three inches or so of windsift atop a perfectly smooth base, top to bottom.
Like I said, smooth, baby. Smoooooooooth. And here's a video to prove it, the first one I've shot all year:
[skitube2]http://www.firsttracksonline.com/modules/crpVideo/pnmedia/videos/1274659789_alta-snowbird_100523.flv[/skitube2]
from the shoulder we skied along the base of the cliffs with one big long un-interrupeted line down through cabin hill out to the summit of cecret lift . two or three inches of loose snow on 100% supportable smoooth . tele jon got some nice pics. from the summit looking west back at snowbird a different view for sure .
Not corn, snow was too new for that. If there had been more new snow it would have been cement in the sun. So the key must have been the smooth subsurface that bonded to just enough new snow instead of staying frozen granular. My closest experience may have been after the 3 days of rain to 12,000 feet in the Sierra at New Year's 1997. That storm ended at Mammoth with about 7 inches of dense snow. The top opened a couple of days later (wind and control work) and skied much as described here. Sort of like skiing powder over a groomed run except of course you can do it on more interesting terrain. I'm guessing from the video that wide skis were still the tool of choice.
/ Another 9" new as of 10:40 a.m. today and still snowing. 602" season to date as of this morning.