Day 5 - Saturday Dec 1 - A Day To Be Remembered

After the storm in the middle of this week Jer and I decided we would head out today. We then saw last night's storm coming and there was no way we were going to miss it. The avalanche forecast done by the Utah Avalanche Center that was posted yesterday afternoon was very mild. Bruce Tremper called for low danger with some spots of moderate on certain aspects particularly in wind affected areas. This was promising, but I knew better. I knew that the layer beneath this week's snow was week and was not likely to hold the new stuff very well. I had this premonition confirmed when reading what the Wizard of the Wasatch had to say so we made sure to be very careful out there. We tried to get out a little earlier than we suspected everyone else would so Jer picked me up at 6:30. The only problem was that neither of us have a car that is four-wheel drive and his Jetta was not doing super great even on the flat roads in the city in the new snow. We took a little detour over to Jer's parents' house to borrow their X5. We could not even get his car up the hill to their house. We had to park it on the side of the approaching road. It was very kind of Neils to allow us to borrow his car. Needless to say, we ended up getting started a little later than we had planned. We were finally headed up the canyon around 7:30. There were a bunch of people up in the Grizzly parking lot as we had expected. We tried to get going as quickly as possible. We were surprised and joyed to find that we were the first ones to be heading into Grizzly Gulch and up on the Patsy Marley ridge from this storm. Most people were going to skin over in the closed sections of Alta where I assume they must feel more comfortable. We traded off breaking trail and we were not rushing anything as we were not in any huge hurry. We were passed on the ridge by Andrew McLean (the world's premiere ski mountaineer) and his touring partner who were thankful for our skintrack and were kind enough to then lay one for us for the rest of the way (notice the photo of Andrew's urine). Our original plan was to go into the Patsy Marley bowl, dig a snowpit, and preferably ski it. This changed when we saw the natural slide that had occurred in the bowl before our arrival. Just for educational reasons, we dug a pit anyway in an area that was very representative of the area that slid. We found that underneath the new snow from this week was a meltfreeze crust on top of loose facets to the ground. The top layer slid very easily and this information did not exactly instill confidence in us and our desire to ski this line. So we adjusted our plans. We took our skins off and headed back down the ridge a little to an area that we were confident in due to its lower angle and tree growth. This proved difficult for both Jer and I to ski. I found myself putting too much weight forward and therefore my tips kept diving. I soon figured it out and got some sweet turns the rest of the day. We skied back down to the area where the skin track begins up to the ridge where we put our skins back on and made our way to the top (only after discussing the snow conditions with a group of people checking things out). We did not traverse the ridge this time. We just skied the area just West of the first open area on the ridge that has become a mainstay of our backcountry skiing repertoire. We found this to be stable enough to ski and we got some sweet turns in it. I have to say the these were the best turns of the year so far. I was really happy Jer got some video of at least one of my runs because it was great out there. We took a couple laps in here and then decided it was probably time to head back. It was 12:15 and we both had things to do at home. The skiing was great. The exercise was great. I really enjoyed digging a pit again and remembering all that I learned from last year. I can't wait to get out again!