Red, White, and Couloir

Ride 'em, cowboy.

A temperature inversion, but it was still cold where we were. Can you tell that there's a city of one-million people there?

Making our way on Red Baldy, in White Pine drainage, to ski a couloir---hence the title...

Couloir = booting.

The snow was what it was. You savour the reality that once the real snow comes we won't be up here in a 40-degree couloir on Red Baldy anymore.

Earning your turns the hard way: on the way up, but also on the way down. Making trenches in facets is technically skiing because you have skis on your feet, even if they feel like two toboggans on your feet....

Ghetto Skiing

We went to Dog Lake Ghetto ski-style, with blue jeans, mismatched poles, and ski-like non-ski things on my feet.  They have a telemark-style free-heel snowboard bindings and permanent climbing skins on their bottoms, if that makes any sense to you.

They're actually a lot of fun with a kid strapped to your back...

Imms had fun skiing on the lake.

Lookin' PRO-shit-show...

White Pine Facets

No new snow in a while, but the ridge of high pressure on our thin snowpack has subdued our meagre accumulation into unconsolidated sugar snow---faceted re-crystalizations of the original fluffy flakes, the stuff you can't make snowballs with. It hisses as your skis glide by.

We headed up the White Pine drainage, one valley over from Snowbird's boundary but a world apart.

Climbing high on Red Baldy, with views to the Phiperhorn---the tallest peak in the central Wasatch wilderness.

The avalanche danger was low but we practiced our techniques, spotting each other as we zig-zag between safe vantages.

The sugar snow that collected in the little chutes off Red Baldy's northwestern aspects skied OK. Not a bad first day.

Ben's fakie...

Wire Peak Flurry

There is a nice false summit/saddle about half way up Wire Peak. We stop there to get out and play.

She wanted to press on to the summit, shrouded in clouds. 

After the hike: The Sunday New York Times at Tulie Bakery, so she can read up on the "issues." Imms is about to level with me on the Fed's changes to the amortization structure of US Treasuries...