I gotta chime in about today
By far the DEEPEST skiing of my life! What has already been an epic year has gotten even more epic!
I mean, how many can say that they have come to a complete stop on a 35 degree slope because of snow? Today, it must have happened four or five times! Dropping what used to be 15 footers are mere pillows. Shrubs..well, what shrubs? Cliff bands gone. Gates buried.
Turns were well underneath the snow. Mouth full of snow. And our lines hardly crossed a track! It basically comes down to skiing the Stoy line where the face has only been skied a few times this year so it was basically 7 feet of untouched snow from this storm cycle. Absolutely ridiculous.
Who would have thought that today was one of the busiest days ever at Basin? Once we were off the tram...nobody until we got back to the base.
3 laps is all we made since we showed up a little late and talked to patrol about the slide that released. Our friend Kap balsted the Ogden flank and all he heard was the sound of a locomotive coming towards him. about a 6 foot crown that ran over a quarter mile. Kap said the snow cloud was a few hundred feet high as he watched the massive slide move by. He also said that in all the years of chucking bombs, he has never seen anything like it. Crazy!
And to think that most of the people we saw out of bounds, in high avalanche areas, with a high av warning, in one of Utah's most infamous terrain traps, skiing with no beacons, probes, shovels or back country awareness. The typical response when I asked them if they had beacons..." We ski this all the time, its not gonna go."
Happy new year!