Storm in the Buttermilks

A three day storm in Buttermilk Country.

We saw quite a few photography tourists in the area, and as the storm moved through, the reason for their presence became clear.

There were enough breaks in the storm that climbing everyday day was still possible.

The right wrong turn on the Great Western Trail

I have a multi-year continuing obsession with a theoretical Trans-Utah north-to-south bikepacking route from the Salt Lake area down to the Boulder mountain area in southern Utah. The theoretical route follows more or less the Great Western Trail. In past years my friends Ben and skiWill and I have done various sections of the route, from the northern Wasatch range (here), the Southern Skyline drive section, and the Fish Lake region.  I had big plans this year of actually completing it all. However, trivial and not-so-trivial things conspired to derail those plans.

 The trivial derailment was that we took a wrong turn on a section in which we did not have a map. This section was the very first bit of our route, coming out of Utah valley on Hobble Creek road. What's more, we screwed ourselves on the very first turn, which routed us north rather than south. After climbing 3000 feet on four-wheel-drive road, I discovered our error when the next supposed turn-off at 13 miles was not where I had planned. That's when we figured we were screwed and we rode into town after 55 miles of riding.

If the trivial problem did not get us, the not-so-trivial problems would have. One is that we were three people with vastly different paces on different grades. We all traded places who was fastest at different sections, but the overall pace was only as fast as the slowest rider. The second was that I was not acclimated as well as in previous years. Third was our lack of planning (read: no map). This was a failure on my part mostly, but Ben and skiWill helped by trusting me. Why such bad planning? Well, I had a paper revision that I submitted hours before I left for this trip. I had no time to get a detailed map purchased and studied in time so I went on some scribbled notes, but I did not write down all forest service road numbers for the route. skiWill has a bad case of grad school, so he's no good. And Ben? Ben goes on adventures like this every weekend I imagine, so he did not care at all what actually happened.

And that was just fine, because the day of riding we did have was excellent. We attacked the non-route with reckless abandon with smiles the whole way. Here are some pictures.

So for next year, if the stars align, I'd like to do things differently. First is to get a GPS. Second is to do it with full touring gear, so I have all the food I need and don't have to rely on shuttles or caches and go at my own pace. This is a better self-supported style, and as a bonus, when things don't go as planned I/we can stop and rest were we feel like, not where the car is. Third is to do it with gears, so I can realistically haul all the touring gear I need. Fourth is to get all my work done long before I start and go backpacking at 10000 feet for a few days to get completely acclimated. I'm sure Ben and skiWill have their own take on how to do it. Next year, hopefully, we can figure out a real plan.

Here's to next year!

How to win ugly goggles and fail randonee races

So a couple weeks ago I decided to enter the Wasatch Powder Keg in the tele race division. I did this despite a perfect storm of personal and grad school events that wiped out December, but fortunately, ever bedraggled, I got sick and all this led to losing over 10 lbs (which as you well know I could not afford to lose) fortunately February was riddled with hideous avalanche conditions so training was, well non-existent. I figured what the hell, it's a new course at Brighton which I know pretty well so I would at least have some fun and learn something. Here's how it went down:

We gathered at the base of Millicent for the start at 7AM. The racers went out together in their skis while the rec division started about 10m back with a Le Mans style start which I regret not being able to see. The gun went off after the 30s warning (no countdown) and a drag race ensued across the flats towards the main lodge and then climbed past the bottom of Snake Creek up to the top of the Great Western lift. On the climb up I tried to keep a reasonable pace and hang with the main group. The real racers were off on their own.

Upon reaching Great Western I realized several fatal flaws. First my hydration tube was frozen solid and my Gu packs in my jacket pocket were not faring much better so no food or water after the 1800 foot lead off climb. Then, I realized that the snaps on my skin tail attachments were stuck and I could not get the skins off of my skis. At this point I quit counting how many people were passing and just took my skis off and went caveman on the skin attachments with my skis poles until they were freed, which worked, because, well I look like a caveman. Finally done with the transition I stuck my hydration mouth piece in my zipped up jacket and headed out of Brighton down cheese grater into hidden canyon which was really fun on low cut tele boots with lots of tracks.

At the bottom I rejoined the cluster and started the climb out of Hidden back to the top of Western. By now, all of the people that had passed me had not had to perform any difficult ascending maneuvers like the dreaded kick turn. Granted the track was a bit thrashed, but there were people falling everywhere and really thrashing the track taking other people out and impeding the progress of a large number of racers when this crusty dude with a rocking snot-sickle behind me grunts, "If you can't make a kick turn get out of the way and get in the rec class!"

At this point, I just thrashed through the trees and started breaking my own trail leaving as much chaos as I could behind me, but at this point, we were really in a heated battle for position between irrelevant and who cares.

Returning to the top of the Great Western lift we tucked down the groomer on the ridge and skinned up past the Snake Creek lift top station and then dropped a southwest facing slope from the summit. As you can imagine, it was a stellar shot (which is past tense of another word) complete with breakable crust and littered with splitboarders who hadn't had to do the route into Hidden Canyon. I managed to find a supportable bit and channel my inner snowboarder and side slipped past some carnage to the next transition where I successfully managed to dodge a tele ski that had had enough and was headed to Heber sans skier.

This climb took us up to Pioneer Ridge and then down a chute back into Brighton. The chute skied well and I learned another valuable lesson. Racers don't use Life-Link probe poles to save weight. They just pack a probe and use real poles. The reason for this I found is that if you have a particularly zealous pole plant, you can deploy your probe pole and find yourself well downhill of your pole with grip still firmly in hand. Sadly, Mr. Snot-sickle and some guy from Voile passed me on my way back up to retrieve my pole.

The decent continued down towards the base of Millicent on a mix of groomers and rocky bump runs (hooray 70% snowpack) to the next transition. At this point my water was still frozen and the attempt to thaw a Gu that I had opened had merely resulted in welding a pocket shut. Despite the lack of water and nourishment, I was still feeling pretty good going into the last climb and was making ground on a Voile employee on some prototype skis. I passed him on the way up Millicent and picked off a few more. Then my right skin fell off my ski and everyone passed me. Then I passed them all again and my left skin fell of my ski and everyone passed me again. I used the ski edge of one of my skis and successfully managed to squeegee enough moisture out of the skins to get going again. Most people were probably hating life by the time they got to the booter, but I was thrilled since it meant that there would be no more issues with the climbing skins that I was about to maniacally destroy. I think that single thought gave me the motivation to overcome the massive calorie debt and motor up the booter in time to see the Voile prototype skis exiting the checkpoint. Since it was no use trying to eat or drink anything, and my skins had handily fallen off at the bottom of the booter, I was able to quickly jump into my skis and head for stupid chute. The battle for irrelevant place was on.

I passed my foe on the side step up to stupid chute from the saddle between Mt. Millicent and Mt. Wolverine and dropped in. The skiing was genuinely good, but a cold front was moving in and visibility was getting pretty bad as opposed to my legs which were completely fresh and therefore the thought of straight-lining it on lightweight tele gear across the bowl above twin lakes seemed like a brilliant strategy. This brilliant strategy resulted in what I can only imagine must have been the most epic over the bars tomahawk of my life. Sadly, there was no one there to capture what must have been quite a spectacular site of a gangly 6' 1" skier with skis flapping and snow flying everywhere. Somehow, I did not hurt myself but I had lost my sunglasses, which I found covered in snow and ice as my foe passed me by again.

Not to be denied, I headed down and across the lake with my glasses in my pocket hoping to defog them a bit. Luckily the graupel meant that I could not really keep my eyes open, but fortunately it also meant that it would freeze eyelashes together welding one's eyes shut thus avoiding that tricky decision of skiing with eyes open or closed. Using my remaining brain cell, I decided that glasses would be a good idea so I tried to clean them off, and then I had a crystal clear view of whatever was caked on the inside of the lenses. Somehow, I managed to see that I was closing in on regaining my irrelevant position so I motored up the side step at the dam, danced through the moguls and trees, and crossed the line hungry, thirsty, and able to see about 10 feet in front me by firmly in irrelevant place rather than who cares.

The reward for all of this? The new bar has been set for ugly, steezy, free goggles:


So, what did I learn?

1. Take two pairs of skins. One for speed and one for tricky technical sections. Alternate between the two and you will not have adhesion issues. This apparently is a well known strategy amongst the fast guys.

2. Do not use a fancy tail attachment for your skins.

3. Do not keep Gu packets in an outside pocket. That stuff will be just about solid.

4. Keep your water in liquid form. Doing 5,000 feet of ascent by chewing on ice sucks. Seems like the really fast guys have a water bottle and the inconvenience of opening it is a small price to pay for the insurance of a water supply while choking down "food."

5. Those croakie things in the schwag bag are so you don't lose your shades tomahawking down the final decent.

6. It's worth it to feel like you're going to throw up on the first climb to stay ahead of the transition chaos at the beginning of the race.

All in all, I was pleased with the race and actually had a lot of fun. I think the guys that set up this new course did an awesome job, and hopefully they can keep it for next year because the course itself was brilliant. I'm looking forward to not being in terrible shape and not fighting with gear so I hopefully post a respectable time next year.

Bells Canyon

Ed foolishly agreed to head up Bells Canyon with me yesterday. The tour essentially amounted to an uphill endurance festival, but thankfully had 5500' of steep descending in stable powder to make up for it. Heading to Bells was calculated - there was a high west facing slope (off N-Peak) that I had been eying for a while, whose aspect and elevation would hopefully result in stable snow. Since it was a bluebird day, we also gambled that any crust that might have formed the previous afternoon would soften by the time we got there.

Additionally, while skiing out Bell's Canyon is quite sporting, we hoped to find stable conditions allowing an exit out Coalpit #4. The surface hoar problem pervasive in Millcreek and BCC hadn't been seen much in LCC, and there appeared to be slide debris at the bottom of Coalpit #4 when viewed from the road a couple of weeks ago.

That said, there was a risk of deeming the high west slope too unstable or crusted to ski, then backing off Coalpit #4 and sking out Bells through the scrub oak. We planned to be very cautious, as this year's thin El Nino snow pack has been trouble, and this would be the first time we have had enough confidence in the snow pack to play in bigger terrain.

Ed skinning low in Bells, still skeptical about finding snow.

Passing Middle Bell Tower.

Nice views of Lone Peak

and Lisa Falls.

Higher still. Perla Peak marks the entrance to Coalpit #4, which thankfully had been climbed and skied by Volunteer Stability Testers earlier in the day.

Finally on top.

The run off of N-Peak. We weren't yet confident enough in our snowpack to center punch the slope. It was hard staring down 1400' feet of consistent, open, 37 degree powder and not skiing it, but we opted for the skiers right edge of the path.

Ed below Perla peak, preparing to exit 3000' down stable, slightly cut up powder in Coalpit #4.

Me, tired and done.