Day 70: The best plans don't always happen
"Bluebird skies" seems overused in ski reports, but hey...it doesn't get much more "bluebird" than today -- temps in the 60s (it's pushing 80 in the Salt Lake Valley this afternoon), blazing sun, no wind, and a cloudless sky. Glorious.
Hooked up with Marc_C, Bob Dangerous and Skidog at the Peruvian lift at 10:30 and we headed up. Peruvian Gulch had already started softening, and after a warmup run we headed back to Mineral Basin where things were already past prime. That's a nice way of saying "manky glop." We quickly retreated back to Peruvian, where a run through Mid-Cirque was still a bit stiff in the tracked up crud, but softening.
We took in a quick burger on the deck as we discussed what had been our objective for the day: Main Chute on Mount Baldy leading down into Alta. We bumped into Craig Gordon from the Avalanche Center, who hinted that north-facing may be a bit gloppy as it hasn't been through sufficient freeze/thaw cycles to generate good corn. We'd also gotten feedback from Bob's friend Jeff that Main Chute was filled with basketball-sized balls of glop from yesterday. Craig opined that our "plan B" - dropping into Livin' the Dream on Baldy's south side if Main Chute looked rotten from above - would be a better one.
We headed back up Peruvian, as Skidog had a chairs-only ticket, and back into Mineral to reach Hidden Peak via MBE. That, however, convinced us that we wouldn't be hiking Baldy at all today. If Craig and Jeff's suspicions of Main Chute conditions were true, Livin' the Dream would be pure wet slop. We opted to hold off on Baldy for now.
So instead we skied Right Regulator down to Little Cloud, still slightly stiff on west-facing aspects but getting better by the second. We spied some lightly tracked lines above Gad 2, and headed out the Knucklehead traverse only to find the gate closed beyond the Knucklehead Chutes. #-o Even those, however, skied rather well back to Little Cloud.
It was time for a marathon run. We struck out for the Upper Cirque, and found Shot 10 right at prime time. We hung a hard left and skied the Turbo Traverse (Bob also calls it the Cool Whip, not sure how official that is or not...sometimes I think he makes up some of these names) to return to the Peruvian Cirque ridgeline at the Lower Cirque, then drop off the other side into South Chute. We found the whole gamut of conditions over there, from stiff snow in the upper trees to mank down low above Big Emma, and everything in between.
We scooted across Bass Highway, already only 1 lane wide on the west-facing side - to get back to Peruvian for one last run to return to our vehicles parked on the Bypass Road by 2:15.
Total vertical skied? No clue -- I forgot to turn on the logging feature in my watch.
We drove up to Alta after taking off our boots to scope things out. Main Chute was heavily tracked up from what we could see, although four folks were skiing Little Chute and seemingly having a great run. Bob plans to head there tomorrow -- I'm not sure if I'll be skiing tomorrow or not. One thing I do know, though: once again it's a shame to see Alta closed with that much snow remaining, even after this lean year.
"Bluebird skies" seems overused in ski reports, but hey...it doesn't get much more "bluebird" than today -- temps in the 60s (it's pushing 80 in the Salt Lake Valley this afternoon), blazing sun, no wind, and a cloudless sky. Glorious.
Hooked up with Marc_C, Bob Dangerous and Skidog at the Peruvian lift at 10:30 and we headed up. Peruvian Gulch had already started softening, and after a warmup run we headed back to Mineral Basin where things were already past prime. That's a nice way of saying "manky glop." We quickly retreated back to Peruvian, where a run through Mid-Cirque was still a bit stiff in the tracked up crud, but softening.
We took in a quick burger on the deck as we discussed what had been our objective for the day: Main Chute on Mount Baldy leading down into Alta. We bumped into Craig Gordon from the Avalanche Center, who hinted that north-facing may be a bit gloppy as it hasn't been through sufficient freeze/thaw cycles to generate good corn. We'd also gotten feedback from Bob's friend Jeff that Main Chute was filled with basketball-sized balls of glop from yesterday. Craig opined that our "plan B" - dropping into Livin' the Dream on Baldy's south side if Main Chute looked rotten from above - would be a better one.
We headed back up Peruvian, as Skidog had a chairs-only ticket, and back into Mineral to reach Hidden Peak via MBE. That, however, convinced us that we wouldn't be hiking Baldy at all today. If Craig and Jeff's suspicions of Main Chute conditions were true, Livin' the Dream would be pure wet slop. We opted to hold off on Baldy for now.
So instead we skied Right Regulator down to Little Cloud, still slightly stiff on west-facing aspects but getting better by the second. We spied some lightly tracked lines above Gad 2, and headed out the Knucklehead traverse only to find the gate closed beyond the Knucklehead Chutes. #-o Even those, however, skied rather well back to Little Cloud.
It was time for a marathon run. We struck out for the Upper Cirque, and found Shot 10 right at prime time. We hung a hard left and skied the Turbo Traverse (Bob also calls it the Cool Whip, not sure how official that is or not...sometimes I think he makes up some of these names) to return to the Peruvian Cirque ridgeline at the Lower Cirque, then drop off the other side into South Chute. We found the whole gamut of conditions over there, from stiff snow in the upper trees to mank down low above Big Emma, and everything in between.
We scooted across Bass Highway, already only 1 lane wide on the west-facing side - to get back to Peruvian for one last run to return to our vehicles parked on the Bypass Road by 2:15.
Total vertical skied? No clue -- I forgot to turn on the logging feature in my watch.
We drove up to Alta after taking off our boots to scope things out. Main Chute was heavily tracked up from what we could see, although four folks were skiing Little Chute and seemingly having a great run. Bob plans to head there tomorrow -- I'm not sure if I'll be skiing tomorrow or not. One thing I do know, though: once again it's a shame to see Alta closed with that much snow remaining, even after this lean year.
Attachments
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10 alta catherines area 070428.jpg -
09 alta collins gulch 070428.jpg -
08 alta 4 ski little chute 070428.jpg -
07 alta baldy little and main chutes 070428.jpg -
06 snowbird upper p cirque 070428.jpg -
05 snowbird peruvian gulch 070428.jpg -
04 snowbird south chute bobd skidog 070428.jpg -
03 snowbird skidog south chute 070428.jpg -
02 snowbird admin south chute 070428.jpg -
01 snowbird af twin peaks 070428.jpg
