Skyline Peak - Idaho

Wow, what a day in Idaho. After driving through a harrowing blizzard on Friday night from Utah to Idaho I hooked up with my travel and ski buddy Casey to go to Pebble Creek on Saturday morning. As we were walking from the parking lot to the chair lift we met up with my former next door neighbors Scott Burnham and his son Mark. We skied with them all day. Mark is an expert back country skier and has worked professionally as a guide in Utah and around Sun Valley. We skied 3 runs on the front side traversing north slightly out of bounds to catch some nice powder shots then traversing back into the resort. Then we grabbed our climbing gear and rode the chair to the top and transitioned. We hiked up a skin track right by the ski patrol lodge to a point between Skyline Peak and Bonneville Peak. Mark had skied the back side the day before and knew of an excellent run of about 1,800 feet of vertical with untracked, deep powder. Wow, what a treat. We enjoyed beautiful sunny skies and uncharacteristically light winds. After our killer ski run we hiked back up without gloves and hats. Mark even shared some of his home made power bars - yummy. We could see the Grand Teton from the backside. Casey and I hiked back to the top and skied back into South Bowl. Scott and Mark did another lap on the backside. We got more excellent powder after we got down a bit from the super icy and wind scoured top. We were skiing through the trees back to the resort. The South Bowl powder was skied out but we still had fun cutting through the chop. This was the best snow and conditions skiing this year. The smile on my face will last for a week I'm sure.

Patsey Marley revisited

I did the dawn patrol this morning. I invited Brett to go but he had work committments. I put a bunch of presure on Scott to go with me but he is fight off a cold so he didn't want to go. I hiked in what I believed to be super safe area. I hiked up the cat track to the Twin Lakes pass and then up the ridge to Patsey Marley. I stopped short of the summit as there were large cornices along the ridgeline and some of the had broken and run out in the past couple of days. I elected to transition and ski. The powder was super deep. As I skied through the trees there were a bunch of drifts to plow through and jump over. It made for a fun ski out. I got back to office before 10am. The photo is of the Gunsight chute. The same as the header of my blog (the summer ski photos).

Patsey Marley

I got up pretty early, downed some granola and headed for LCC. It was snowing and blowing pretty hard at the end of the road where I started hiking. I headed up the Albion summer road then up to the snow cat road toward Twin Lakes pass. Just into the upper area I followed a skin track up the ridge toward the top of Patsey Marley. I had my new Stokes but was using the skins for my Mustagh Ata skis. They left quite a bit of ski uncovered by the climbing skin so when the trail got steep I slid back. It made for slow climbing. A couple of other hiker passed me. I stopped with them as they dug a snow pack sample. I knew the conditions were pretty stable but the snow pit confirmed it. I climbed a bit more beyond that spot and then skied on back to the car. I ended up taking about a half hour longer than I had planned because of the slippery climbing. The visibiliy was bad the whole time. Got a good workout though.

Little Superior

I parked my car in Big Cottonwood Canyon where Craig picked me up. We drove to LCC to meet up with Frankie. We started hiking about 11:15 from the fire station up toward Cardiff Pass. At the ridge we traveled west toward Mount Superior. Our objective was to get as close as possible to view possible the ski lines from the top and then ski out to BCC where my car was parked. We lunched on the ridge just before we booted to the top of Little Superior. The final boot was very steep but there was a set of boot tracks Frankie followed. After he and Craig booted up they made the footholds well pronounced for me. Even though it was the steepest, iciest path I had been on I felt pretty secure. There were some clouds starting to come into Little Cottonwood Canyon as we were making our final push up but by the time we got ready to ski they had blown on by. With the excellent visibility from the top we elected to ski off the south east face back to our cars in LCC. The first 3 or 4 turns were icy but conditions improved and we were skiing in already skied soft snow. There was a little sluffing at the top but the snow stabilized as we descended. I tried to video some but I couldn't see the screen in the bright sun. Needless to say my videography was lousy. Frankie on the other had got some nice still pics of our outing. Thanks Frankie. We had soft snow and fun skiing all the way to the road. We dropped onto the road about a mile away from our cars. Craig and I hiked on up to the cars but Frankie being the wiser of us all caught the bus. The clouds blew back in and covered the terrain that we had just skied so we couldn't really see our line that we had just descended. Craig and I went back to BCC to fetch my car. We then drove to the Black Diamond store where Craig bought some Whippet Poles and an ice axe for our next ski mountaineering adventure. What a hard day of climbing but so fulfilling in the end.

Bonneville Peak - Bannock County, Idaho

Casey and I drove up to Pebble Creek ski resort Saturday morning. I bought a one ride pass and we rode up the main chair lift. We then hiked up to the ridge between Skyline Peak and Bonneville Peak following a skin track through the frosted trees. Just before we reached the ridge we were passed by an split boarder. While on the ridge heading toward Bonneville Peak we were passed by a telemarker. They were the only other backcountry folks we saw all day. Near Bonneville Peak we saw the split boarder. He was ready to go off the back side to what he called the Super Bowl. The fog was thick and we couldn't see the terrain but we followed him anyway. The ski shot off the backside was awesome. About 1,200 feet of vertical in mostly open terrain with what seem to be the perfect steepness. The snow was skiable but a bit crusty on top. The snow continued to improve the further we dropped. The visibility also improved. At the bottom of the run we saw the split boarder transitioning for the skin up so Casey and I started to skin up as well. We were able to follow his tracks. We stopped about 300 feet from the ridge to have lunch. We then skinned to the ridge and over to Skyline Peak. We transitioned again and skied in to Stacey's Bowl. We got some decent powder in the trees above the resort and then skied the groomer out to the car. I'm guessing that we climbed about 2,000 feet of vertical today. A real nice effort for Casey's first tour. Hopefully I can travel to Idaho again soon and do it again with Casey.

Tri Chutes

Tom, Will and I hiked up the White Pine trail to the Tri Chutes on the west side of the west peak of the American Fork Twin Peaks. It was a bitter cold day. I had an extra layer on everywhere. I started hiking with my normal hiking gloves but they were too thin. My hands were freezing after just a few minutes of hiking. Will had new skis. He was hiking on Voile Vectors. They are about 95mm under foot. I was excited to be hiking with Will because I wanted to see him ski. He telemarks. After we lunched we pushed on up to the skier's left chute. Tom dug into the snow to test the snow pack. It broke after 22 taps (a technique he learned in a recent avalanche course). He pronounced the area safe to ski. Will got first tracks and did a super job carving beautiful telemark turns. I went next and biffed it after only two turn. The rest of the run went well though. We hiked back up and skied the middle chute. More first tracks. We found a few more little shots where we got 8 or 9 turns on the ski out. We were in the sun from our lunch area on through our skiing of the chutes. As we were on our ski out we were back in the shade of the valley. My face was so cold with the wind blowing on it. We had almost forgot how cold it was today. We also had a bit of excitement on the drive down the canyon. We spun out on one of the corners. Yikes.