Wasatch 08-09 Conditions

[Johnny Deep]

OAG stressed that to us in the Avi II class. "Get out there, don't hide under your bed! When it gets dicey out there, that is when you learn about all of this." It has done well for me.

Thx OAG!

[Wasatch_Expat]

I'd rather them err on the side of caution and have me safe at home in my bed than say things are fine and end up with someone getting buried.

Evelyn is quite aware that she over forecasted last week and I'm sure she is sorry that you missed a good day out there. She is also glad she didn't under forecast and get you killed.

Tell Evelyn not to worry about it and thank her, Bruce, Drew, et al for the fine work they do. UAC are good folks--I was just talking out of my ass.

One more thing for Wasatch Expat: I don't know your level of training and maybe I shouldn't say this but what the heck. If you have an avi class or two under your belt and a bit of experience, don't miss a day because the danger is rated high or even extreme. Those are the best days to learn about snow and instabilities. You have to be really careful with your terrain but there are always places you can go, maybe not for turns, maybe just to dig a hole or two but go on, get out there. And if they have over forecasted maybe it'll be the best day of the season and you'll have it all to yourself.

Good advice. And probably not just for me but anyone who's reading the board. I go as much as I can without putting my livelihood at risk but the skiing is always prioritized over the education. I'll dedicate a few days to learning first and skiing second.

[Helldawg]

Tom^^^

Thanks for stopping in with something useful and informative.

If only everyone's 1st post was like that, this board would be a lot less cluttered.

[marauders]

A fine DP today in upper BCC. In north-facing, non-sheltered terrain below 9K the snow was a bit heavy, above 9K a stout wind slab was beginning to form making turns difficult. We stuck to sheltered NE facing and found nirvana. Probably 16"-20" of light, luscious powder.

We dropped two cornices with no results. No other instabilities noted. A strong SE wind was beginning to blow with light snow around 10am.

[MultiVerse]

Went up Argenta for a quick tour. Blue skies early in the morning with a crust on the lower apron and more & more pow as you approached the headwall:


Plus, fresh snow was falling above 9K on the second lap, enough, that we were already breaking new trail:


And no time for skiing photos since the bottomless blower was so go good that the parting words were, “see you at the bottom.” Wanted to do another lap but have to do some work sometime.

[grenalds]

Anybody know what this guy is called? Chute going south into Deaf Smith from the cirque above Stairs Gulch. Maybe 700-800 vert.

[RTR]

Anybody know what this guy is called? Chute going south into Deaf Smith from the cirque above Stairs Gulch. Maybe 700-800 vert.

^^^Don't know what it's called, but it looks sweet.

Went up BCC for a quick tour, this morning. We found no instabilities... only blower cocaine powder, very minor sluffing, some of this...


And some of this...


...a wonderful break from a very high-stress work week.

[the vor]

EDIT: Partners found, stoked for tomorrow. Thanks guys.

Looking for a partner, anybody wants to get out tomorrow shoot me a PM or I'll probably head back to reynold's again, maybe scottie's. Too much resort time lately, granted it's been good.

[Xover]

dusk patrolled tonight in scotty's. 2 laps top to bottom. below about 8.5k the spring sun got to it and it will have a crust on it tomorrow - would expect this on all aspects. above that, no crust and super fun, surfy style riding ... so fast. this is due to any kind of fat or rocker ski on top of the 6-8" of non wind affected blower which now sits upon a wind soft/hard slab which sits upon not blower, but lighter snow than the slab consists of.

the av report this morning raised my spine tingler to north facing slopes (due to the obvious wind directions) as well as their words speaking of harder slabs than monday/tuesday and the potential to propagate. this may have been the case earlier in the day; but later in the day, i saw the interface that the uac speaks of, but cornice drops, ski cuts, knuckledragger hucks, etc. were not intiating any propogation what so ever where i was at - which incidentally was about 7.5k to 10k.

tonight was the best dusk patrol of the year so far for me all things combined with the light being the democratic decider .... was pinkish/orange for a very short amount of time on those super small, blower roller balls on a fresh field of Wasatch pow, pow

p.s. be wary of the slab i speak of above in higher, more open terrain ..... could have just enough "pop" to prop and take one for a ride.

[Johnny Deep]

The best part of yesterday was the April Fools morning reports!


Epic.

The Skiing was damned decent too.

[the vor]

Climbhigh1119 and I got out into days and silver fork this morning where there was some slightly heavy wind affected pow to be had. Cornice drops by us and multiple other parties showed nothing impressive and snow was generally stable. Definetely avoided some areas that looked slabby, but other than those near ridge areas things were good. Crust was present coming up from alta, but not as much as one would expect. The exit down south facing was actually not that bad. Winds started picking up around 11.

Wasn't the viz we were hoping for and my pictures suffered because of it. Hopefully climbhigh has some better ones.

This B&W attempt would work out better if i hadn't cut off the arm.



Climbhigh in Silver Fork, right after sun poked through. It quickly started dampening things on the way back up and out.

[MultiVerse]

^^^ Must have been there and hour or two after you guys i.e. did a quick midday tour in Silver Fork. Warm temps meant mashed potatoes but the next front began to roll through and along with falling temps a crust was beginning to form but lots of new snow was falling above 9K with sporadic rain showers at 8K.

[The Gnarwhale]

Skied laps on **** this morning. As Vor said, * and * faces had a sun crust. * and * were skiing well above ****.

Dropped a fat cornice on the top of *** and watched car sized blocks destroy the freshy without setting off anything interesting. One turn in pulled out a 3"-5" deep **** **** where the cornice hadn't rolled, visible on the left side of the pic.



The snow was nice below the ridgeline and above the flats.


The skinner out **** was filled each time for the last few laps. Soft slabs were forming quickly on the leeward side as we headed up and out. Storms 'a comin'.

In the rarely seen recesses of the *******.

[subjectmatter]

gents,
glad to see everyone getting out and enjoying this snow cycle. please continue to get after it. polite request: please stop naming the drainages and locations. marauders post is a great example of sharing pics and observations without giving away the farm. the way i see it, there is no reason to name drainages. the only thing this accomplishes is to tell us you knew where you were and to give directions to those less motivated than you. thank you.

[zion zig zag]

gents,
glad to see everyone getting out and enjoying this snow cycle. please continue to get after it. polite request: please stop naming the drainages and locations. marauders post is a great example of sharing pics and observations without giving away the farm. the way i see it, there is no reason to name drainages. the only thing this accomplishes is to tell us you knew where you were and to give directions to those less motivated than you. thank you.

I agree, I drove by Argenta today and it was hammered. I attribute that to the recent reports that named that as the location skied. That run used to be pristine for days.

In other news, all aspects and elevations got wet today.

[Trackhead]

We skied the North Slabs of Olympus today, good to go, over the head blower to the car. Skinner and booter is in.

[The Gnarwhale]

I can totally get behind an alias who is willing to make polite requests.

From hereon please keep all observations vauge and all photos must be accompanied by the "wink" emoticon.

Admin, please change the thread title to reflect this new direction.

In other news, REI has agreed to pull the Wasatch Tours series, the Wasatch Tours maps, Backcountry Skiing Utah, and Chuting Gallery from shelves immediately. They had no idea they were blowing up your stash.

[MultiVerse]

Later Today, went up R****lds for a dusk patrol with Ruletherock. Good company but maybe not the greatest skiing conditions. Ruletherock probably could have done two maybe three laps but I was a little cooked from today’s earlier tour:



Ruletherock rockin' the snow science:




Edit: For pics and brevity.

[RTR]

Ruletherock probably could have done two maybe three laps but I was a little cooked from today’s earlier tour.

Are you kidding? I'm a donut-consuming desk-jockey! Great to meet you.

gents,
glad to see everyone getting out and enjoying this snow cycle. please continue to get after it. polite request: please stop naming the drainages and locations. marauders post is a great example of sharing pics and observations without giving away the farm. the way i see it, there is no reason to name drainages. the only thing this accomplishes is to tell us you knew where you were and to give directions to those less motivated than you. thank you.

This is a good point. I can think of one exception: when avalanche danger is high, it should be called out. After all, this is supposed to be an observations thread... but I think that naturally, it takes on a TR persona. I don't mind that; in fact, I like it like that. But I respect the concerns of those locals that have been here for a long time. It sucks to lose turf, especially to gapers and transplants like myself. I'd REALLY like to know whose alias "subjectmatter" is. If you could, pm me, and let me know. I give you Scout's Honor that I won't share with anyone. Mostly out of curiosity, but I'm itching to know if it's a long-time forum member, or someone more like me. I'd also like to ski with you, some time.

In related news: Yes, ePiech and I hit up south-facing 6500-9000 ft-ish, this evening. Left work at 4:30 pm, skiing before 5:30 pm, now I'm back to work at 9:00 pm! Deadlines suck.

When you roll with ePiech, you roll in style... Audi style...


We saw a lot of this... mostly at lower elevations.


ePiech, looking happy to be out on his second tour of the day...


ePiech skis so fast, every picture of him I took turned out blurry... (notice the wet slides in the foreground and background)


Cornices were well-formed on the east side of ridgelines, snow had a good layer of crust, which made for adventuresome turns (including a few acrobatic tumbles). We dug a pit at around 8500 feet to see what was happening. Snow was only 4 feet deep to get to ground! One pronounced layer was found about 18 inches below the surface, but an isolated column test warranted very little concern. Lower elevations, wet point slides were happening like it was going out of style. By the time we had hit the road, it was snowing hard, once again.

[grenalds]

[QUOTE=zion zig zag;2337892]I agree, I drove by Argenta today and it was hammered. I attribute that to the recent reports that named that as the location skied. That run used to be pristine for days.[QUOTE]

Name dropping one of the largest, most visible and accessible slidepaths/ski runs in the Wasatch has lead to more traffic? I suppose this had nothing to do with the boom in backcountry touring in the last few years... farm's gone. Lift up flagstaff. 10+ people up poleline every powder day at 5.

I like to hear what people are up to. Good stoke. People without motivation are riding lifts on the weekends.

[Nathan Explosion]

I agree, I drove by Argenta... That run used to be pristine for days.

Twenty years ago?

[Trackhead]

Name dropping one of the largest, most visible and accessible slidepaths/ski runs in the Wasatch has lead to more traffic? I suppose this had nothing to do with the boom in backcountry touring in the last few years... farm's gone. Lift up flagstaff. 10+ people up poleline every powder day at 5.

Z3 was joking.

[The Gnarwhale]

This is a good point. After all, this is supposed to be an observations thread... but I think that naturally, it takes on a TR persona. I don't mind that; in fact, I like it like that. But I respect the concerns of those locals that have been here for a long time. It sucks to lose turf, especially to gapers and transplants like myself.

I dont mind the TR-bent either. In fact I like it. But I also read the American Alpine Journal each year....

What I'd be disappointed to see is this thread turn into it's TTips doppelganger, where each new post is scrutinized, observations critiqued, and the posters character called into question.

And it seems to me that "subjectmatter" is bringing up a point thats been a point of contention on that thread, which is that naming routes is dickwaving. The irony I see is that the "wink wink I'm not going to name names" crowd often cops some self righteous 'tude but then go on to include scenic shots that gives away the pertinent info anyway.

I find it a more humble and more useful approach to just name the name and move on.

Kinda ironic that ttips is clogged with aliases and pissing matches and TGR has a welcoming, stoke-filled vibe. Which is a shame because they have the expert panel of Athey, Kimbrough, McLean et al posting there.

The way I see it, nearly everyone on here is a "tier 3 user." Most of us have Avy training, read both UAC and NOAA forecast discussions and ski two or more days a week. We're all so fanatical about skiing we spend our free time (or a lot of hours on the clock) geeking out about local conditions. I bet nearly everyone here has a wasatch backcountry guidebook section on the shelf. And the names being dropped on this thread are rarely obscure ones.

So lighten up.

[Xover]

gents,
glad to see everyone getting out and enjoying this snow cycle. please continue to get after it. polite request: please stop naming the drainages and locations. marauders post is a great example of sharing pics and observations without giving away the farm. the way i see it, there is no reason to name drainages. the only thing this accomplishes is to tell us you knew where you were and to give directions to those less motivated than you. thank you.

imho, you start out with a great attitude. however, i personally like to hear where peeps have been and on what aspects and at what elevations. that way i know what to expect snow wise and quality of turn wise .... isn't THAT what it is all about .... freshies

p.s. my personal thanx to all that post as stated above

[sfotex]

Wait, is there a secret, uncrowded drainage in the Wasatch sheep pen?

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I didn't think so.