What's The Matter With Powder Park?

Nearly running up Little Water Peak---windboarded and crunchy as always.

We started the day with a few laps on the north side of the peak.

Light through aspens.

Red, White, and Blue: traversing the peak and subsequent ridge line on the way to Powder Park.

Our final lap on the fall line south-facing shot of Powder Park. The Park is like the petting zoo of the Wasatch---low angle, safe, and cuddly. Fifty turns in 4-inches of cream powder. The area is often crowded, except when you get to the trailhead at 7:30, which we always do, and you get first tracks even on your last lap of the day.

Which is to say, there is nothing a matter with Powder Park.

Powder, Debris

The two Wills and Ben went for a ridge walk to the top of Gobbler's Knob. Ben brought his spotting scope to view avalanches. We spotted some old avalanche crowns, now wind-blown and filling in, of when the entire west face pulled out.

The author at the summit.

Ridge walking.

Its hard to see, but someone wanted to decorate the summit of Gobbler's with a sparkly somethingorother in the tree. The view north to the Sessions mountains seems decoration enough. 

And yes, there was some skiing. There was about 10 turns in creamy powder on the 30-degree sub-ridge, the best of the year thusfar, before it gave way to crusts and avalanche debris from the last storm cycle.

The best of crust, the worst of crust

Early morning skin up Butler Fork, with views to Kessler Peak and the Argenta slide path.

Making our way up to Mt. Wilson. The Wilson chutes (right) have not slid and look scary and the Rime-covered trees at the top are pointing to Wyoming and into the horrendous wind that is blowing much harder in the valleys. The air was still up high though...

Me and the Twin Peaks massif.

Its February now. The bushes are still pushing out of the slopes at 9000 feet. We ski breakable and non-breakable crust and are happy about it. There were moments of making quite nice edge carving turns. Who knew that in the Wasatch in February you'd have to use those metal edges. I thought those were for resort groomers. At the top, Ben pulled out a sandwich made with barley flour, and I suggested he make pizza crust out of the barley flour. He's going to try that tonight. This whole day will be about crust of some type or another.

Wind Chill

We hiked Wire Peak.

Its an amazing peak for its windiness. Everything is calm till right at the top.

Imms has now summited Wire peak and Mt. Aire. We are starting a list...

Wasatch Ski Mountaineering Citizen Race

I went out to the first public citizen ski mountaineering race up at Brighton. 

 Warming up by skinning up to the Snake Creek lift (photo credit Chad, by way of Jason Dorais). I'm in the ninja suit, center, wearing the appropriate attire of lime green Scarpas. 40 people showed up. A super nice crowd.

The course was a series of short and easy laps in one hour, not a full-on skimo race course with tricky technical descents, but it did include a short boot pack which added a simple tactical feature where it was good to sprint out and pass someone before the boot pack goes single file and you'd be stuck in traffic. The race winner did 7 laps in a smidge over an hour. I did 6 laps in about 1:02, and I feel great about that, especially considering I had conventional light touring gear, not the ultralight race gear.

Damn it was fun. There are lots of things one can do to get ridiculously tired, but for some reason doing it on skis, going uphill fast, it just makes sense to me. Consider me hooked.

See the link below to a video of the race:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RjQQ0Vrkkco

The Pine Grosbeak Winter Finch

A big, sluggish finch of conifer forest (mostly spruce and fir, not pines [ironically]), nests in the north or high mountains, wander in flocks when not nesting. Erratic in winter; may invade large areas one year and be absent the next.. Typically uncommon and quiet. Sometimes wanders south for winter; small flocks may feed on berries, maple buds. Can be very tame. Long tail, stubby black bill, two wing-bars. Adult male mostly redish pink and grey, female and young are gray with yellow or orange on head.

Desert Rats of the New Year

Nice grips on the Tongue boulder V4. They apparently named this boulder after me and my tongue.

Sandwiches and campstove tea for New Year's.

This sandstone really is perfect.

My job was to carry Imms and our pack. La Lissa opted for the unwieldy double padzilla. Good job  La Lissa!

Imms opted to hike most of the dry wash herself. All day long she was ecstatic hiking over everything and eating snow, the most happy I'd seen her in a while...