This was my first day out for the season. I got a call from my buddy Jeremy (from here on he will be known as Jer) saying a friend of his, CJ, was looking for a touring partner for the morning and Jer would be unable to go. I quickly made the decision that class was worth skipping in order to get some early season turns in. I called CJ and we met the next morning at the mouth of Little Cottonwood at 6 am. It was the first time I had done a dawn patrol. All of my previous tours have been very relaxed afternoon tours where I had all the time I wanted. On this particular day I had to be to work at a reasonable hour so we had to go early. We drove up Little together in my Honda Civic as we listened to Radiohead: Kid A. I
figured this would be a great way to start off the season. Nothing like an epic album to really get things going. We decided that Silver Fork would be a good tour at this time with fewer tracks than across the street at Alta. We began the ascent via headlamp since the sun had not even begun to appear at this point. The ascent sucked. On the south facing side here there was minimal coverage and what little there was happened to be froz
en over. I came to find out very quickly that I was out of shape. I had not done anything this aerobic for some time and it was showing. I was just doing my best to keep up with CJ. We reached the summit just as dawn was occuring. It was a beautiful site. As my first dawn patrol this was something I realized I had been missing. CJ quickly got to it and dug a snow pit to assess the avalanche danger. We decided it was acceptable and prepared to make our turns. My first line was pitiful. I had not skied since May or June of last year and you could tell. I struggled putting my turns together with clean, solid lead changes. We skinned back up for another go (which was quite difficult breaking trail seeing that the snow was quite deep). My second line
was solid. I felt really good about my turns and was very glad we had decided to go a second time. CJ is an impressive skier. He was a lot of fun to watch. I am looking forward to skiing with him again in the near future. It was then a little after 9 am at this point and we decided to start heading out. We skinned back up and began our descent down the south facing slope. This was the most unpleasant part of the morning. It was so bad that we ended up just booting down about 3/4ths of the entire mountain (which took quite a while) because of the lack of coverage. We arrived at the car around 10:30 and headed home. For the ride down the canyon I played Joanna Newsom: Milk-Eyed Mender - a beautiful album from a beautiful vocalist for those of you who are unfamiliar. It was a good way to slow things down for the rest of the day. All in all this was a great way to start off the touring season.
figured this would be a great way to start off the season. Nothing like an epic album to really get things going. We decided that Silver Fork would be a good tour at this time with fewer tracks than across the street at Alta. We began the ascent via headlamp since the sun had not even begun to appear at this point. The ascent sucked. On the south facing side here there was minimal coverage and what little there was happened to be froz
en over. I came to find out very quickly that I was out of shape. I had not done anything this aerobic for some time and it was showing. I was just doing my best to keep up with CJ. We reached the summit just as dawn was occuring. It was a beautiful site. As my first dawn patrol this was something I realized I had been missing. CJ quickly got to it and dug a snow pit to assess the avalanche danger. We decided it was acceptable and prepared to make our turns. My first line was pitiful. I had not skied since May or June of last year and you could tell. I struggled putting my turns together with clean, solid lead changes. We skinned back up for another go (which was quite difficult breaking trail seeing that the snow was quite deep). My second line
was solid. I felt really good about my turns and was very glad we had decided to go a second time. CJ is an impressive skier. He was a lot of fun to watch. I am looking forward to skiing with him again in the near future. It was then a little after 9 am at this point and we decided to start heading out. We skinned back up and began our descent down the south facing slope. This was the most unpleasant part of the morning. It was so bad that we ended up just booting down about 3/4ths of the entire mountain (which took quite a while) because of the lack of coverage. We arrived at the car around 10:30 and headed home. For the ride down the canyon I played Joanna Newsom: Milk-Eyed Mender - a beautiful album from a beautiful vocalist for those of you who are unfamiliar. It was a good way to slow things down for the rest of the day. All in all this was a great way to start off the touring season.
