The past few weeks there has been a nasty high pressure system sitting

over Utah and the dry, warm weather associated with it left the ski

conditions pretty marginal. This last weekend, however, we had the

perfect set of storm systems roll through and change that all around

really fast. The first couple days dropped a foot or so of super warm,

wet, PNW style snow that knocked out surface instabilities and provided

an amazing base for the two or three feet of super low density, cold

Utah blower pow that fell over the next couple days. I got some

ridiculous skiing during the storm then on Tuesday the sun finally came

out, so needless to say, this week was good.

I got an early start on Tuesday to try and beat the powder frenzy that

was sure to ensue. I met up with Jeremiah Watt at 5:30 to start our

skin up Little Superior, and it was a balmy -6 degrees at the

trailhead.

We got to the top just before sunrise, and were treated to over 2000 vertical feet of chest deep cold smoke.

Photo by: Jeremiah Watt

Photo by: Jeremiah Watt

Photo by: Jeremiah Watt

Photo by: Jeremiah Watt

Photo by: Jeremiah Watt

After that I took a quick water/snack break at my car, and then met up with Jonathan Cracroft to ski some Alta slack-country.

…and some flippy-spinny stuff in Rocky Point:

On Wednesday the winds came in and blew the snow around a bunch,

filling in a lot of tracks from the previous days. On Thursday Cody

Barnhill met up with a few others to take advantage of the wind-loaded

landings in the rock gardens at Brighton. I’m not sure I can show you

the goods that came from the real photographer, but here’s a sample of

the day’s events that Cody snaked on his point-and shoot:

Lining up some rocks

Sending…but not so much spinning on this one

So yeah, this week was great fun, and mildly ridiculous. Until next time…

-Carston