Little Cottonwood

Today I hiked up from Alta to the pass that looks into Mill D-South just west of Flagstaff. Then I skinned on up the next peak to the west. At the top there were glorious views of Superior, the Pfeifferhorn and all the peaks around Alta and Snowbird. The Powderbird helicopter was dropping skiers off in the Cardiff area. There were getting some nice low angle pow from their drop to the drainage. It was satisfying to be higher than they were at their drop. It was a beautiful sunny day and I hiked in my shirt and baseball hat. There wasn't much wind at the ridge either. I originally thought that I might hike up Superior but again my lack of knowledge about where to start put me in the wrong drainage. I tried to boot on down the west side of the ridge but it became a drop off so I booted back up to the peak. I debated skiing off to the north and then out to Big Cottonwood canyon but would then be in need of a shuttle back up LCC to get my car. At the peak there was a nice and steep couloir to the southeast. The snow was good in the center of the gully but as you got the edges the snow became crusty. The soft snow was deeper that I would have guessed and made the turns fun and tiring. After I got out of the steep section the snow became increasingly more difficult to turn in. Near the end of my run I was just traversing back and forth across the snow as I had absolutely no control in the crusty conditions. I crashed a couple of times on the way down re-torquing my left ankle. I lost my right ski twice but the left ski never came off. Maybe I need to ease the DIN on the left ski. My left ankle is pretty sore. I hope it doesn't slow me down as there is killer storm coming in tomorrow and I hope to get out on Thursday after it dumps. It should be epic.