Wasatch Powder Weekend (April 3-5, 2009)

In early April our friends Caroline and Alex from back in Ontario made the trip out to Salt Lake City to experience some of the renowned Utah powder skiing (the best snow on earth, if you trust the state license plate slogan).  The weather had been pretty warm and dry throughout most of March, but luckily for us, the weather gods started dumping snow in the days leading up to our ski weekend.  Caroline, Alex, and Roanne (now that I think of it, I guess Roanne was visiting our house in SLC for the weekend as well) arrived Thursday night, and after touring our estate at 1337 Harrison Avenue we settled into bed to get some rest for the next day's skiing.

It snowed hard all night, and upon waking in the morning it was still snowing, with the storm forecast to continue throughout the day.  We had initially planned on heading up to Alta, but after checking the road conditions it seemed that Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed due to snow, so we decided to head up Big Cottonwood Canyon (which was still open) and ski at Solitude instead.  We saddled up and headed for the canyons, and enroute we learned from a sign that Little Cottonwood Canyon had been opened so we reverted to our original plan of skiing at Alta, since then we wouldn't have to deal with pesky snowboarders (Alta is skiers only).  As shown below, we joined the procession of cars full of people who were not feeling well enough for work on this snowy Friday, but somehow were feeling up for a day of skiing in waist deep powder.

Anyways, I won't get into the minutiae of our day, but suffice it to say that a few feet of snow had fallen in the last 48 hours, and another foot fell during the day while we were skiing.  Alex had been watching a lot of "Pow" movies to prepare himself for the trip, and much to Caroline's delight he insisted on filming "Pow" movie snippets throughout the day on his digital camera.  None of us have very much experience skiing in powder (or skiing at all, for Alex and myself), so most of the "Pow" movie segments consisted of us straightlining it at low speed through deep powder and gradually picking up speed until coming to an abrupt halt in the position demonstrated by Roanne below:

Given the nature of the action sequences, we settled on a title of "Beginners in Pow" for our ski movie.  Here are a few more action shots, where Roanne has assumed her standard position of lying prone in the snow and searching for her ski, and Caroline comes in to help only to find herself in the same situation.

In the photo below I managed to corral Roanne in one of her rare stationary-yet-upright moments for shot of the two of us.  As seen in the background it is snowing pretty hard, and visibility was generally pretty poor though it didn't matter too much since most of the landings were soft ones.

We had a great day, and as we walked back through the parking lot we passed a few cars that were going to need some digging:

After leaving Alta we stopped by the Outdoor Recreation Program at the University of Utah to pick up our Alpine Touring rental gear for the backcountry ski adventure that we had planned for Sunday.  After some discussion, since we were all pretty tired we decided to take the next day off from skiing in order to be fresh and rested for the backcountry skiing on Sunday.  Normally taking a day off like this in the midst of these epic snow conditions would never fly with me, but as it happened their was another event on Saturday morning that I was interested in that promised equally epic conditions: a bicycle race called "Hell of the North".  For the lesser-educated folks who might be reading this report, April is an important month in the cycling world as it is the season for the spring classics.  These are a series of one day races that take place in northern Belgium and France, on notoriously bad roads and in even worse weather.  The most famous of these are the Tour of Flanders (which happened to be taking place on this exact weekend) and Paris-Roubaix.  Both of these races include sections of road paved with cobblestones that are very difficult to ride over and create a lot crashes, flats, and general mayhem.

The "Hell of the North" race in Salt Lake City was designed to emulate these races, with the riders completing multiple circuits of an 8 km loop that includes about 3 km of bumpy, dirt road.  Normally a flat circuit race like this wouldn't be of much interest to me, but throw in the dirt road and the forecasted high of 1 degree Celsius with wet snow, and suddenly I was very interested.  I packed my gear up Friday night, and settled into bed with dreams of Tom Boonen dancing on cobbles floating in my head.

I woke early Saturday morning and was delighted to see that the weather forecasters had been correct, it was around freezing with steady snow falling.  The night before Caroline and Alex (who are both racing enthusiasts as well) had enquired with Roanne as to whether the race would be worth going to watch, but my ever-supportive wife had quickly assured them that it was most definitely not worthwhile, and it would be much a much better plan to remain in bed.  So I hopped in PT and headed to the race course.  I rode a lap around the course to warm up, and then headed to the start line.  Our group was doing 5 of the 8 km laps for a total of 40 km, and we started out at a good pace with a few attacks livening things up.  As we hit the dirt road for the first time things got strung out, and immediately my glasses were completely covered in mud from the spray of the people in front of me.  I had to take them off, and just try to ride while squinting and blinking a lot to try and clear dirt from my eyes.  Not much happened on the first few laps, though we shed a few riders due to the high pace being forced at the front. 

I was feeling good as we passed through the dirt road section on the third lap, but all of a sudden I started to notice that the dirt road didn't feel nearly as rough as it had that last time around.  Initially I thought this was great, until I looked down and saw my rapidly deflating front tire.  Flat!  Stinker!  I had put 28mm tires on to try and avoid this problem, but I still flatted.  Later I diagnosed the problem as a pinch flat, I think this might have been due to the fact that the tubes I was using were only intended for use with tires up to 25mm, so maybe the rubber was stretched too thin.  Merde!  Anyways, there was a wheel car following the race, and I got a new wheel, but by the time I had changed it the pack was a good 20 seconds ahead, and despite my best efforts I was not able to close down the gap and rejoin the peloton.  I still finished the race, motivating myself by picking off riders who had been dropped by the lead group.  At one point on the dirt road section I passed a rider in the ditch who had crashed and was being helped by the wheel vehicle, and while on the one hand I felt sorry for him, on the other hand I got a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart with the thought that this had turned out to be a real spring classic, complete with bad weather, flats, and crashes.  The only thing missing was herds of rabid, beer swilling Flandrians lining the course and shouting insults at the riders.  Anyways, I ended up finishing in 18th place out of 30 starters, not bad considering my poorly timed flat (although I guess all flats are poorly timed, unless they happen after you cross the finish line).

After rolling through the finish line I headed back to the truck where I drank some chocolate milk and then headed back to our estate to rendezvous with the other beginners in pow who were probably just rolling out of bed.  Here are some photos of me after returning home, with a lot of dried dirt on my face and bike:

We deliberated a bit on what to do for the afternoon, and finally decided to go walk around downtown so that Caroline and Alex could see the Mormon Castle (so dubbed by Alex).  We parked near downtown and walked the rest of the way, stopping in a bike shop enroute where we checked out some really nice bikes, as well as one that looked like it will be appropriate for Mason or Brenna in a year or so:

After the bike shop we continued on to the Mormon Castle, which is shown below:

The ground surrounding the Castle were really busy with the faithful, all very well dressed and most standing in a huge line up for something.  Upon enquiry we learned that it was their annual general conference, which apparently is a big deal.  There were even people scalping tickets for it, and others with signs trying to buy tickets.  This seemed strange to me, as a church conference seems like an event where I would paying somebody else to attend in my place, rather than vice versa.  Oh well, I guess we'll never understand them, and we might as well just be happy that the ski resorts are way less crowded on Sundays due to the high Mormon Quotient in Utah.  Upon reaching the head of the line we were greeted by another interesting sight, with Christian protesters waving the signs at the Mormons telling them that they would burn in hell if they didn't start reading the King James version of the bible (or something to that effect):

This had no visible impression on the Mormons, who maintained their blissful demeanors and filed happily into the convention center.  After finishing our tour we worked our way back towards our car, passing a squad of identically dressed police officers whom were taken by Alex to be the Mormon Army.  We stopped to take a look at the construction taking place at the former location of the ZCMI mall:

Finally, on the way back to the car we passed a coffee shop where we stopped for some espresso (Caroline and Alex), some mint tea (Roanne), and some liquid chocolate (Me).  Lately I have developed a strong affinity for coffee, due to it being the beverage of choice for Italian cyclists.  However, I had already had my pre-race, performance-enhancing coffee earlier in the day so I opted for my second go-to beverage (chocolate in liquid form).  Here is a picture of Caroline and Alex in the coffee shop:

On the way back to the house we picked up some groceries for dinner that night and lunch the next day.  Below Alex is working on dinner and I am making some delicious avocado sandwiches:

As we were making dinner the rain stopped and it began to clear, with a beautiful sunset:

This boded well for the next day's activities: backcountry skiing in waist deep fresh powder under bluebird skies!  Since none of us have much (any) experience with backcountry skiing, we had arranged for a guide for the next day, and also asked our friends Mike and Laura to join us.  The guided backcountry ski trip was actually part of Roanne's b-day present from her siblings, so a big thanks to Holly, Tristan, and Mer for providing the impetus for this backcountry adventure!  The plan was to start in Big Cottonwood Canyon and work our way up and over into Millcreek Canyon, getting some good skiing in along the way.  This required having a shuttle vehicle as we would be starting and finishing in different canyons, so we loaded up the car and headed up Millcreek Canyon where we met Mike and Laura.  We then loaded everybody and their gear into our rental car (which made for a pretty full load, as seen below with Caroline on the left and Laura partially obscured by skis on the right) and headed to our rendezvous with Dynamite Dan, our guide for the day.

We met Dan outside a bagel shop, and then headed up Big Cottonwood Canyon where we parked near the Mill D trailhead.  We unloaded our gear and suited up, and then performed the requisite checks of our avalanche beacons (that Dynamite Dan had thoughtfully provided for us).  Below are Caroline, Roanne, Laura, and Mike getting ready in the parking lot.

We also spent some time sizing up our competition for the day, the Grateful Dead Ski Team (shown below getting suited up in their tie dyed pajama ski suits).

Once all was in order, we crossed the road, donned our skis, and started busting trail up towards a peak which was called with Wilson Peak or Reynolds Peak (I can't quite remember).  Shown below are Roanne and Mike with Dynamite leading the way.

After toiling away for a while and one stop to apply wax to our skins which were balling up with snow, we finally had our first summit in sight, as shown below on the left.  You can see from the tracks that we weren't the first ones up here for the day, but there would still be plenty of fresh snow.  After taking a breather we continued on up to the top, on the right Dan is leading the way.  Through this open section we spaced out with about 50 feet between each person, so that if anything were to slide we would not all be caught in it.  Partway up, Dynamite spent some time jumping on the cornices to see how solid they were, which in my unlearned opinion didn't seem like the safest way to test things out.

Here is a shot of Caroline headed up the track:

And then one of myself and Dynamite sharing a lighter moment (left), and Laura, Mike, and Roanne cresting the summit (right).

Once we had gathered on top, we stripped off our climbing skins, locked down our heels (except for Mike and Dan who were on Tele gear), and took a look at the waist deep cold smoke that we were about to head down (below), very nice!!!!

Dan went down first, giving out some wild yelps/yodels which at first I thought just meant that he was having fun, but I later deduced were intended to allow us to follow him as we headed down after him.  One by one we followed him down, laying down flawless turns in the deep powder (okay, maybe "flawless" isn't the right modifier for that noun, but it was still fun).  Here is shot of Alex trying to decide which way to head through the untracked powder:

We reconvened further down, sonically guided by Dynamite Dan's yelping:

We then continued on through some tree skiing that Dan assured us was wide open and easy, but didn't turn out to be easy enough for my liking.  My rental skis were 14cm longer than my own skis, and I found them a lot harder to manouver.  Nevertheless, we finally all made it down in one piece, reapplied our skins, and started trekking up our next adjective, which I think was called Soldiers Peak.  Along the way we stopped for lunch (below) where we enjoyed delicious avocado sandwiches and oatmeal raisin cookies.

After lunch it was time to earn some more turns and we started plugging away again up the hill:

After a bit of work we reached the top of Soldier Peak, I am shown below surveying the broad expanse of fresh snow and donning my powder cloak in preparation for the way down:

The south facing slope that we had planned to ski (Fred's birthday run) turned out to have softened up too much in the sun (mental note: start earlier next time!), so we headed down a north facing slope instead which still had really good snow.  At our rendezvous point halfway down the slope Roanne had a low speed collision with an aspen, and upon trying to regain her upright position she was kind enough to demonstrate some of the pole dancing moves that she had been working on:

We then continued on down through some tree sections, and skied out into a drainage.  At this point Dynamite Dan asked us if we had had enough yet (it was just before 4:00pm), and we assured him that we most certainly had not, so we headed up yet again.  I can't remember what peak we headed up, but it was a nice climb and made even more fun by Dynamite Dan allowing me to take the lead and assume trail breaking duty.  At first I don't think he believed me that I actually wanted to break the trail, I guess most clients like the guide to do the work.  However, I could see that Dynamite was huffing and puffing a bit, and I wanted the full backcountry experience so I was happy to share the work.  It also gave me lots of good practice for the European Kick Turns that Dan had taught us.  Here is a shot of Laura, Mike, Alex (behind Mike), Roanne, and Caroline working their way up the slope.  Alex was having a lot of problems with his skis balling up, and later he revealed that every time he heard Dynamite Dan happily yodeling up ahead, he would unleash a torrent of curses about how he was going to beat the happy yodeler with an avalanche probe.

Anyways, we finally made it to the top of our objective, and after Dan performing the obligatory cornice jumping safety and pronouncing it good to go, we de-skinned and suited up for the final ride down.  Here is Mike getting ready for the downhill:

We headed down in pairs, and the snow was not as easy to ski as our earlier descents since it had "zipper crust" in a number of places that made it hard to turn.  Nevertheless, we all made it down, shown below Roanne is carving a high speed turn with surgical precision:

Upon reaching the base of the steep part we continued down a drainage towards Millcreek Canyon, finally emerging at the road which is groomed for nordic skiing in the winter.  We skied out down the road, and arrived at our parked shuttle car around 6:30pm, not a bad days work!  By this time we were pretty tired and hungry, so after retrieving our other cars we headed to the Porcupine Pub and Grill for some well earned burgers and ales.  We had an amazing time, and the experience was enough to convince both Roanne and myself that it is high time that we both acquired some AT gear.