I gotta chime in about today

[Stoysluttie1]

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!

[backpack]

Yep, it was good today. Rode the tram with you the first time, and then dropped off of no-name just before ya'll went off wherever.

I actually ended up one ridgeline too far over on accident... a bit of a slog back to the lower parking lot.

Saw the branches and various bits of trees poking up around powderhound bowl. That slide went pretty far.

[jayfrizzo]

I've got to get up to the Basin.

J-

[Stoysluttie1]

BP- I really haven't been paying much attention to the people around me. Say hello next time so i can meet you and maybe make some runs.

I'm guessing you went towards the Pyramids??? Its one ridge over.

[splat]

Originally posted by splat
Wait til this next storm hits you guys, Stoy. It's freakin LOADED!

[backpack]

Originally posted by Stoysluttie1
BP- I really haven't been paying much attention to the people around me. Say hello next time so i can meet you and maybe make some runs.

I'm guessing you went towards the Pyramids??? Its one ridge over.

It's ok... I wasn't absolutely sure it was you until later anyway. I only met you once, for like 5 minutes, in the parking lot during the summit two years ago, so even though you looked familiar I couldn't figure out why for a while.

Yea, that's probably where I ended up. I still can't decide why I thought I was still on the right side of the ridge... I kept trying to get over further so I wouldn't have to come down until the last signline where the catcher road is, and ended up way over where I shouldn't have been. There really aren't many boundary signs/lines along the ridge, and I KNOW that, but I still expect to see them. So, basically, I was stupid, went out of bounds and over a bunch of obvious slide paths (most of which had slid very recently), and luckily didn't decide to go down any of the gullies that hadn't just slid. I passed a few other people stuck in the out-run who didn't know they'd gone so far, either... at least by then I realized what had happened and told them how to get out.