Gunsight

The long Memorial Day weekend started with and early hike this morning. I drove to Alta and hiked up the Gunsight chute. The snow was firm in most places but soft enough on top to turn. I used my crampons and mountaineering axe for the steeper part of the hike. Got to the top at 9:30. I found a pair of skis that had probably been buried the first time the previous season. They had lots of rust on the edges. One of the skis was broken and one of the bindings was also broken. I still carried them out with me. Bonus. My consecutive months of skiing streak is still going. I skied at the resort once and did a tour with Tom into the Tri-chutes in April. With this outing today I am at 20 months. October 2010 to May 2012. I will probably get June turns too but not so optimistic about getting July, August and September turns. BTW, I went to Hawaii on vacation the first of May. I was able to do a little hiking while there plus plenty of snorkeling. I scuba dove a couple of times too. Ben, my son in law, dove his first real dives while in Hawaii. Big fun on the Big Island.

Tri-Chutes

Thank goodness that Tom gets me out in the snow. Tom, Anne and I hiked up White Pine to the Tri-Chutes to ski some fresh snow. Beautiful day for a hike. Tom's turn (like always) are perfect. Me and Anne have some work to do.

Emma

Morning dawn patrol. Skinned up Grizzly Gulch then cut over to the the Emmas. Found a nice place to ski. Best soft turns of the year. A beautiful sunny morning after a good storm. I should have called in sick and skied at the resort the rest of the day but I went to work after the skiing. I had a smile on my face all day.




First light on Mt. Superior

Morning view of Mt. Superior

You can see the Pfeifferhorn in the middle of the shot

Lake Blanche tour

I had read a recent blog post from a backcountry skier that I follow. He ski toured into Lake Blanche because he wanted a nice low angle hike that didn't expose them to an avalanche territory. That all sounded great so when I have some time after watching my daughter run a 5k I headed to Big Cottonwood canyon. We had our first real warming trend the few days before so the snow was leaving fast. The trail head is at pretty low elevation. There were a couple of spots with no snow on the trail. When I got in to the lake it started to snow. I headed out on very wet, impossible to ski on snow. I only descended a bit before it turned from snow to rain. I got rained on all the way out. I ended up taking my skis off and hiking. I need to do this as a summer hike. Great scenery.

Curacao diving trip report

Connie and I along with our good Idaho friend the Prices and the Horrocks took a wonderful winter vacation to the Caribbean island of Curacao. We had a nice condo on a rock cliff above the most beautiful bay. It made for an excellent base of operations for our adventures. We arrived on the evening of February 22nd. We used the next few days to get acquainted with the island, get groceries and attend church. On Monday the 27th after a morning hike up the highest point on the island ( Mt. Christoffel at 375 meters) we got outfitted for 6 days of shore diving.

Monday 2 dives at
Tuesday 2 dives at
Wednesday 3 dives
Thursday 3 dives
Friday 4 dives
Saturday 2 dives

Sunday we went to church again and spent more time siteseeing the downtown area of Willemsted. We flew home on Monday morning arriving back in Salt Lake at 11:00pm. The Idaho folks drive home that night. What a long travel day.

Winter catch-up post

After the last two posts we started to get into the real ski season for 2011-2012. With the early season snow, cold temps and then a long period of no snow the snow pack was positioned for bad avalanche conditions for a long time to come. There were a few early season fatalities and the avalanche forecast report would just say "go ski at the resort". I did a few short sidecountry tours near Alta and skied the resorts. My poor skis were getting beat to shreds. I bought some cheap used "rock" skis. On 12/22 shortly after a pretty good storm Tom and I hiked into the Tri-Chutes. We had some pretty nice turns but it was still too shallow of a snow pack to be able to ski anywhere without the worry of hitting rocks, logs and stumps. I took one of my clients (and here daughter) on a hike to Greens Basin. She is an entergetic 77 year widow who just got some snow shoes as a gift. They used snow shoes and I used my skis. We had a nice picnic lunch at the basin. Tom and I hiked 10,420 near Brighton on 1/31. We only got a few soft turns in some trees on the ski out. I hike Flagstaff a couple of times in February. On Valentine's day I dawn patroled and got some great soft turns before work. Alta changed their afternoon pass so you can ski the last 2 hours for $25. Me and some of my co-workers did that a few Friday afternoons in February. Total vertical for this ski season is a pathetic 17,850. I hope the spring ski season allows for more tours and vertial. It will be great if there are some big spring storms like last year.

Baldy

Craig called yesterday to see if I would go with him to get his October skiing in. We met at Alta but decided to hike from Snowbird. As we parked near the Cliff Lodge we saw a young moose. The Peruvian Gulch had a nice summer trail (starting elevation 8,110 feet) that we followed up to the cat track. We didn't get very far up the trail when I found another single ski. I should have kept the one I found at Alta in July. Then I would have a mismatched pair. After I retrieved it I left it on the side of the trail. It had come from one of the Snowbird rental shops. We continued up the cat track to the ridge just east of the tram. We followed the ridge to the top of Mount Baldy at 11,068 feet. The views were excellent. From that angle we could see the Timpanogos summit. And we could see the snow field that we had skied last month. Just over the summit we came to snow where we transitioned. We skied down the ridge and dropped into the main Baldy Chute. The snow was way better than I thought it would be. There were a couple of sections that were real tight and plenty of rocks to try to avoid. Craig skied it from top to bottom without stopping. Very impressive. I stopped a couple of times to catch my breath. We continued skiing out and had snow until we got to the meadow at the elbow of the Collins lift. We strapped our skis back on our packs and hiked out. I was able to catch a ride at the Alta parking lot back to our cars and then shuttled Craig to his. Add 3,000 feet to the new ski season.