Maybird in Spring

I'm sorry I have no pictures for this one. The camera never came out of the pack as the clouds prevented any good pictures.

The skin into the pine and maybird canyons is always a bear. All three of these are hanging canyons and it takes a little activation energy to get out of hyway hell and into shangri la. We have all done it and concede that it is worth it. I tend to like little conttonwood drainages better than big for views, besides mill B south of course, and the Broads fork cirque... Ah hell they are all pretty. I take that back. What I do like is the openness of the red pine, maybird, hogum drainages. I love looking up at the phiferhorn above. Today however the phife was in cloud cover. Ben and I got near the pass into hogum but neglected to go there as there wouldn't be much of a view. We stuck to the trees on the east side of the drainage. Up high the powder was not too heavy by spring standards and the underlying crust didn't cause any funnybuisness till we got lower down. Ben and I had a great decent through the trees on moderate angles and out of harm's way as far as avalanches are concerned. I actually felt relatively comfortable on skis for the first time in the backcountry! I thank Rob for the lesson at alta last Saturday. By the end of last Saturday he told me I did not look quite as bad as I did in the morning.

-w

An ode to energy enconomy

For calories per ounce per dollar you make me holler.

For your sweet crunchy nutty bars I wax poetic. Is that pathetic?

That choco nutty goodness fuels my legs and arms. But only if I eat a whole box does it do me any harm.

On a hot day in my pack, when I'm looking for a snack, I eat one or two and wipe the melted chocolate on my shoe, that sticky sticky goo, perhaps it just won't do, when I go to the store, I wont get any more. I'm sick of that crapola, I think I'll get granola... Aha, but then we go back to the economics, there is only one choice really. At a dollar forty three its just gotta be that one, the great, the only, Ms Debbie.

King's Peak Outing

It all starts with a healthy diner. Then I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and started driving out through Wyoming to King's Peak. The plan was to ski in as far as I could and possibly climb the thing.

Andrew McClean's book states that the road to hell is paved with good intentions but the slog into king's peak is just plain hell. I don't know if that is exactly true, but then again, I did not get all the way in. At 8 in the morning I started off from the road which is three miles further to the actual trail head. By mid morning my elevation was higher, the snow deeper, and the temps warmer.

So warm in fact that snow started to stick on my skis pretty badly. Breaking trail was difficult and slow with the heavy pack on but the scenery was beautiful. It was nice to be in perfect cross coutry ski terrain, with incline for nice steady climbing and perfect kick-and-glide. By about 4 pm the temps started to drop and I conceded that I was no where near the gunsight pass that leads to king's peak and so I'd better just set up camp. I was probably about 2 miles from the pass, and then another 4 to the peak. I had enough food to keep going the next day but M's flight was getting in Satruday night and I didnt want to cut it that close. I found out that the small 220 g propane/butane tank will melt 3 L of water plus all the cups of coffee and tea you want, and cook dinner of cous cous at 20 F. The night was cold. My thermometer diped into the single digits that night. I found out that with two socks with heat packs taped to my feet, with a warm full nalgene in the foot of my bag, with long johns, flece pants, caplene and down jacket on, inside my 0 F rei down time bag that single digit temps are just barely doable. I didnt get much sleep that night but all told it was OK.



The next day I woke and had tons of coffee and relaxed as it warmed up to a comfy 20 F. I tooled around the meadows on my skis for a bit then decided to haul ass back to the car before it heated up too much and got clods of snow on my skis. On my way out I met up with this family, an 10 and 12 year old and this guy who were all doing kings peak. these kids were tough. They camped in the single digits just like i did the night before. We chatted awhile and they told me that they were really enjoying my ski track in. They also told me that the whole wastach mountain club was planning to be up there this weekend to enjoy my ski track.



I plan to go back in a few weeks when the 3 miles of road melts out so I may park closer and the snow will be more settled and there will be easy trail breaking and/or a skitrack in.

-w

Speed demons

Ben Standing Still- just think what it would be like if he were moving!


Maura the speed demon

pKeg photos and an unconventional summary

O.K. Here is the powderkeg race summary.

The bus Maura and I were in overtook the other bus about a mile from Alta and won by half a bus length.

The skin into Alta was discouraged emphatically by at least one Snowbird employee but ultimately proved to be a good warm up.

Lemond starts are not Will's cup of tea. In fact all bets are off for anything located around Will's feet with straps, buckles, skins, clicking mechanism's, plastic, metal, or glue.

With a week of practice on skis one can ski most of the powderkeg.

For a race that lasts about an hour and a half you don't need to bring 5 GU packs or two full water bottles.

Amongst significant others at the finishline Josh is the top alpha male according to Jess. We couldn't agree more.



Bruce Tremper is fast.

The race AT class has discovered that neon green ski equipment makes you faster.

We all seemed to have fun...

Powderkeg preliminaries

I'm sure everyone will eventually have a saga to tell from yesterday's powderkeg, for now I put some photos up on a webpage
HERE

The Gear Chamber

Somewhere in a secret underground bunker strategically located near the Wasatch mountains is the gear chamber. In the chamber is a cache of equipment amassed by key members of imBuildingARockWall. This chamber is the nerve center for operations into the Wasatch and the greater Utah area. Friends with knowledge of the chambers location drop by and borrow the necessary equipment for their amusement. In addition to being a storage facility, the chamber also supports various administrative functions, such as policy meetings, logistical, and tactical discussions. This usually manifests itself in Ben, Rob, and Will cracking PBRs while stareing at a pair of skis or new camming devices.

The gear chamber is not all serious business however. The chamber in the past year has also been the site for cultural enrichment such as chamber music at Justin's going away party.


The coming event at the gear chamber is the Powderkeg pre-race carbo-load happening this Friday. Come on by after the BD pre-race meeting to stuff yourself...

-w

Xtreme Team intro...

Well, we're nearing the end of a truly epic wasatch winter, ..and bad wasatch winters are epic by other mountain ranges' standards. My friend Dennis comes out each year in search of powder. Without exception, when he comes here to ski, it's the worst conditions of the year, sunny, warm, with virtually no new snow. When he comes here to hike/mtn bike, it's cold, and usually snows. We call ourselves the Xtreme Team, ..a division of the men's club. Please see exhibits A and B for our previous adventures.


This year was looking like another year of dissapointment for Dennis. When he arrived it was the worst conditions of the year, but they still weren't bad given the epic season. He went down to moab to take a level 2 avy course in the La Sals. As expected, the la sals were having an awful season, with only 15" on the ground at 10,000ft.


When he came back up to slc, however, something happened, a miracle of sorts .....it started to snow.


Then it snowed more..

Then we finally had a legitimate bottomless powder day, with some sun!



This past weekend we headed up to the Bear River mtns for the 3rd annual Xtreme Xpedition, story to come..

Lower Thaynes Canyon Avy Observations

I made an attempt to ski the spruces in upper Thaynes Canyon this morning, but was turned back by the avalanche danger in the terrain traps in lower Thaynes. The drive up the unplowed road was pretty fun.

For those who are not familar with the drainage, down low in the canyon, the trail goes up a narrow gully with steep walls on at least one side. This is pretty low elevation (i.e. not much new snow from most storms) and wind sheltered, so normally they are fairly harmless. I've seen roller balls and point releashes on warmer days, but that's it.

I wish I had photos, because the terrain traps were far more impressive today. Everything that rolled over to 40 degrees or more had slid naturally in 4" to 6" soft slabs in the new snow. The point of the failure was not very visible as the new snow was sliding on the still soft, but more cohesive new snow. You could see these crowns every where, very impressive, everything had slid naturally. None of these slides managed to cross the very narrow gully - they were only running on the steeper areas. If this had been the only avy condition that I saw, I would have continued up and enjoyed blissful thigh deep powder.

The more interesting and intimidating avy condition on terrain just under 40 degrees that was beneath the the slopes that had slid near the gully bottom. These were still at least 35 degrees in angle. The snow that had slid accumulated in these slopes and had created some big, cohesive, really unstable soft slabs. I played around with some of these in a same location were the terrain trap was small any there was only about 8 vertical feet of these big slabs. Some of these slabs already had cracks in them. If was able to trigger failure in these slabs by skiing into them any watching a 8 foot wide slab break out 3 to 4 feet above me (the slab had no where to go, it moved about 6" down). These were ultra sensitive, kind of like Will when he wears that pink t-shirt. Depending on how much snow had slid down from above, they ranged in depth from 1 to 3 feet.

Since the terrain trap was going to get larger if I went up higher, with larger zones that would have slid to create larger slabs threatening the gully, I aborted. I can only imagine how dangerous similar slabs would have been in larger high evevation terrain. There would have been more snow, more wind, and major consequences. Ski cutting would not have been an option since that could break out from above, and it's pretty hard to carry enough momentum in waste deep powder. This is the sort of condition that occurs frequently in the apron of Wolverine Cirque. The upper chutes can be safe, having already slid, but there can be a large slab lurking below in the bowl. Upper Thaynes would have been really nice though.

Teapot Seeking Male or Female or Groups for Exotic Adventure

Hi there. I'm a single petite teapot looking for fun and excitement out of town. Could you show me a good time? I am light weight so I am sure you could find room for me. I'd keep you warm on those cold nights. We could steam up the tent together. Once you get me hot just keep filling me up and I'll go all night. I am just as comfortable on those solo expeditions as I am in groups. I can only fully serve two people at a time though. My weakness is for cowboy's (coffee) so even after a long night in the morning you will have something pleasant to wake up to. My usual hang is in the gear room at Will, Robert, and Ben's house but I love to go on trips so please call me and show me a good time...

Beware of Daisies!

Last night I went down to Black Diamond to break gear. Yes, that's right I took brand new gear, much of which I don't even own and proceeded to pull and drop it until it failed. (oh, alright, I was mostly just watching the people who were doing it, but it sounds better in the first person) Some very interesting and scary things came up which I wanted to share with everyone who climbs.

Nylon Daisy clipped through the ends, but also short clipped with the same biner, this resulted in total failure as the loops ripped out allowing the biner to just fall off the end and again about 2000lbs or force. Now all you topologists can figure out that yes, there is a way to short clip with one biner so it can't fail, but that can be hard to figure out while on the side of a cliff. The lesson: if you're going to short clip, use a second biner! A bunch of us were pretty horrified to watch our 170lb test load bounce on the concrete floor after this one. It was also pretty cool to see when it's not a real person.

So maybe you knew that already, but I suppose it never hurts to be reminded. Climb safe!

P.S. I skied Green's something today (gully? alley? area? chute?) It's near Meadow Chutes). I'd give the uptrack a solid 8.5 out of 10. The way down only got a 6.5 - too many trees close together for my inability to turn sharply in powder. Something to ponder: How ofen do you like the uphill better than the downhill?

Porter Fork Bluebird

Ben and I went up porter fork today. We are usually pretty fast on the up, but today there was some very impressive splitboarders. They were flying up the hill with those large, unwieldy planks. Very impressive...

My legs on the other hand were doing about as one would expect after 5 days of skiing in the last 6 days. Near the top I started to feel like I was skinning in ankle-deep molasses. The picture says it all...



As for the skiing? It could not be better. After a few cornice and wind-drift kicks gave naught but a shrug we dove down into the top of porter fork bowl for some of the best turns this year, at least 3500 vertical feet worth. Here is a pic of Ben doing the first slope cut




And here is me, another satisfied Porter Fork customer



At this website you may view a video: http://www.math.utah.edu/~nesse/imBuildingARockWall/060314porterFork/

-will

"traning"

I went on a ski tour this morning. I did two runs up the PST (perfectly spaced trees). It took me two hours to do it. I passed a bunch of people on the skin track. my new light dynafit setup is rocking hard on the up and surviving on the downs. my legs are not used to the down part of alpine fixed-heel skiing yet.


I registered for the wasatch powderkeg satruday night. the race is next satruday. M was making fun of me for "training" only a week before the race. But hey that's what imbuildingarockwall is all about: If it's improbable, tiring, ill-planned/not planned, rediculous, but fun, then you will find it here in the form of rock climbing, mountaineering, skiing, biking, and general suffering.



-climbWill