Farming Superior

It's getting closer to Christmas and today I treated myself to the North side of Superior (a wise gift indeed). Now most of superior has been farmed to the bone or rock for those who don't enjoy the metaphor but with exceptional equipment and a little enthusiasm some untracked pow was still left to well...farm I guess. The approach however was heinous basically packed powder to ice in the backcountry nonetheless. 

Cardiac bowl I'd call this factory farming (an unfortunate happenstance in the Wasatch lately).

Why get to the ridge?

To see what's on the other side. Oh yeah and then side cut  30 vertical feet down to the actual skiable snow.

The North Side of Superior (more factory farmed land).

And of course no story would be complete without the picture of where we just were (dead center of the photo).

Another Wasatch Weekend

Well you know the snowpack is just HUGE when your partners aren't even remembering their beacons anymore. We (Me, A OK, and Jack) had figured the North Side of Superior would be a reasonable tour in such a shallow snow pack. We figured wrong an accident on the road had turned us around and to add insult to injury we couldn't even rubberneck we were turned around too far in advance. Unopened terrain at Brighton was are only real other option, as it turned out they didn't miraculously inherit all the snow in the world on their terrain in fact it was quite the opposite. After rocks, blood, downed trees, dirt and a broken ski we had decided enough was enough. 

A OK skiing on his (rockered ski?)

Don't let the turns fool you there were plenty of sharks lurking.

So with all these mishaps you'd figure we'd just cash our chips and call it. Nope we were back at it on Sunday same story, different title I'll let the pictures do the talking.

 Starting the day off just right (this is the trailhed?!)

 Snow and dirt. 

It looks like July out here

NO! it doesn't there'd be more snow in July.

Try downclimbing this (yes it steeper and more dangerous than it looks)

 And of course it was all worth it. Days still might as well be lift accessible with that many tracks in it.

I'd do it all over again

Wasatch 120 and then some

Saturday was race day (The Wasatch 120, 120 minutes as many laps as you can do; ski up, skins off, ski down, skins on, repeat) with the amount of talent and anti gravity there, it wasn't really a race for me (I think some of these guys sleep with Dynafit sheets). More or less my motto was don't get lapped more than 5 times. Chesy though took home first prize in the Woman's division (being the only woman there) and I of course brought home the heavy metal prize. All and all I great outing with lots of great people.

Chesy taking 1st (ripped this from Andy)

With the amount of awesome snow on the ground (a mixture of sugar, sun crust, and muck) on Sunday I went to Twin Lakes Pass.

Naturally picking up a few rock along the way.

The skin track out or in.

An increasingly rockier Wasatch.

The Drought Continues

The title says it all...luckily there is still good powder in a number of places and with the 3 inches that fell over the weekend it might as well be the best of conditions thus far. It's a sad state though when you have to exit via the hiking trail.

So I went to Cardiff in search of the goods.

Still chuting....maybe picked up 2 turns in this little guy.