Reynolds Peak – Part 2

Posted on February 17, 2012 by skiandrocknut

Well the snow is still thin and the snowpack is about the worst it’s ever been. It’s very reminiscent of Colorado’s snowpack. Avalanche warnings are still showing Considerable on all NW, N and NE faces greater than 30 degrees. That keeps us limited as far as terrain goes. So once again we decide to head up Reynolds and check out the low angle North facing shots. We’d read they were good. This time we dragged our split board buddy Matt along for the ride.

We were up early on Saturday, 2/11, and were first on the trail by 7:00 a.m. Easy does it until we got to the turn off and then it’s up from there to the knoll, down a bit and then up to the peak. Close to the top, we dug a pit in the North East facing bowl. It sheared a 3 foot column with the 1st tap from the elbow all the way to the crappy sugar grain snow at the bottom. The bowl looked good. People had skied it, but maybe they were lucky and didn’t hit the sweet spot to make it let go. Not worth the chance. Some other guys arrived shortly after us and dug a pit a little higher and felt it looked ok. They skied it and nothing slid. We passed. Not worth it. Live to ski another day.

From the top of the peak, we dropped in to the North and got some fantastic runs in. Gently slopes, but at least it was soft powder and worth the hike. We rounded back the East at the bottom and skirted around until we were dropping back into Mill D and back out to the truck. We saw a lot of gentle terrain we can definitely come back to hidden up in there.

Here’s a picture of Mt. Raymond in the early dawn light.

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Reynolds Peak – Big Cottonwood Canyon

Posted on February 16, 2012 by skiandrocknut

With the snow pack finally settling down a bit we decided to venture in to the backcountry this morning. Avalanche danger is still considerable for NW, N and NE facing slopes that are 30 degrees or more so we opted to go for something a little less sketchy. At least we would be out in the hills! Reynolds Peak is up Big Cottonwood Canyon of the Wasatch. We parked at Mill D parking and headed up the trail. It was cool, -4 degrees F. Once you start cruising, you don’t feel the cold.

The terrain is mellow for the first little bit up Mill D. We opted to follow a skin track that jutted left and up through the aspens vs. going around and over to Dog Lake. Once on top of the knoll, we could see Reynolds just to the West a bit and the Big Cottonwood road below.

Once on top of Reynolds, the view was amazing. We skied back down the ridge and over to the knoll and from there we had some great powder shots through some aspens. Here is a panoramic I stitched together from my iPhone4S of our view from the top.

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IT SNOWED!

Posted on January 25, 2012 by skiandrocknut

So after what seemed like forever, it snowed. But not just a few inches here or there, but a good old fashioned Utah DUMP! In the space of 5 days, most of the resorts showed 50+ inches of snow at least! Was it good? Yes and no. Now of course all we wanted was snow, but this was snow from Hawaii. Meaning?? It was so moist it’s like skiing mashed potatoes. This wasn’t the huge dump of 50 inches and have it be 5% water blower pow that you sink to your head in and need a snorkel. It was wet and heavy. So as you can imagine with our horrible snowpack, that the avalanche situation has gotten super crazy. We’re giving it a bit to settle down, get some more storms and then we’ll be hitting it. Or maybe just a bit to settle before hitting it!!

Here’s a little video on the conditions:

Big Cottonwood 1-22-2012 by Bruce Tremper UAC

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Our attempt to make it snow…

Posted on January 18, 2012 by skiandrocknut

Yes, you read that right. We want it snow. This was the 6th of January and we have no snow. We have tried many things to get it to snow for the past few months. And has it snowed? No, not really. Not our typically “multi-feet” 4% blower POW. An inch here or an inch there. So with some new gear from Christmas and an itch to get out we decided we head up to Red Pine Lake for a quick overnighter.

The weather report showed a trace to an inch in the higher elevations, so we figured it’d be a good time and maybe we’d be lucky and wake up covered in snow. Why not? We opted for just a ground cloth to lay our sleeping bags and pads on and wing it. Rich had got a new Western Mountaineering Puma sleeping back for Christmas and was dying to give it a whirl.

We skipped out of work early to use as much daylight as we could and headed to White Pine Trailhead. The trail was hard packed to say the least all the way up. Looking back North East towards Superior you can get a feel for our dismal snow pack.

Here’s Rich and the trail up in to Red Pine. Notice how well groomed it is.

Myself and a view looking down in to the inversion that has Salt Lake City by the throat!

As we headed up towards Red Pine lake, it started to get darker and we came across this guy about 40 feet below us. Thankfully he stayed there.

It was dark by the time we got to Red Pine lake. We picked a spot in a small grove of pine trees that would hopefully provide a good wind break and set up camp. The moon was out bright, but was quickly obscured by clouds as the cold and snow was about to join us. By 10:30 p.m., the snowflakes began to fall. I pulled my hard shell over my face and quickly nodded off.

As the snow came down harder in the night, neither one of us could sleep. By morning we were ready to wake up and hit the trail as we had a pile of honey-dos to get done. We had about 5″-6″ on top of us which is more than the skiff to 1″ we had expected. It was just enough to cover all the rocks, roots and dirt on the way out.

Hopefully mother nature will be more giving of her fluffy white goodness sooner than later!

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New Year’s brings…mountain biking?

Posted on January 14, 2012 by skiandrocknut

Well, we still don’t have snow and it’s been so cold the lakes are frozen solid. We need exercise that isn’t stationary. Why not pull out the mountain bike that has been hibernating and take it for a spin? January 2nd was a beautiful day to get above the smog inversion that is choking the valley and hit the Bonneville Shoreline trail that runs alongs the foothills of the Wasatch. We haven’t had snow in over a month so the only thing to worry about is the cold.

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The Inversion

Posted on January 14, 2012 by skiandrocknut

It’s been weeks since we’ve had clear skies or a storm. And honestly weeks since we’ve seen the sun. So what does that mean? Well, check out this picture I snapped from up by the Utah Capitol building. WE NEED SNOW!

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Turkey Time!

Posted on January 14, 2012 by skiandrocknut

With our not so huge winter, the lakes have stayed free of ice. So what does that mean come Thanksgiving Day? Time to pull out the skis for the annual waterskiing trip! We had to go early in order to be back in time for dinner and keep the wives happy. We caught a great sunrise and a speeding ticket on the way to Willard Bay. The water was a little rough, but we did find a little glass along the dike.

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First Tour!

Posted on January 14, 2012 by skiandrocknut

Many thought we were crazy to hit Alta (pre-season) for the first ski tour of the 2011/2012 season just a week after waterskiing, but we had been itching to get on the boards for months! Of course, we were hoping this was the first of many storm blessings from La Niña, but unfortunately this was all we saw for a LONG time!

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Happy Halloween!!

Posted on January 14, 2012 by skiandrocknut

Just like many people around the U.S. and the World, we dressed up for Halloween. But we couldn’t just dress up in any costume, it had to be good and work while waterskiing! In true fashion, we went as “The Sister Wives”. Here’s a link to some of the action shots we took. And yes, the orange GoPro floaty backdoor really works!

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The blog is live!

Posted on January 10, 2012 by skiandrocknut

I finally have the Adventure blog up. I know, I know. It’s MORE info about places, gear, sites, pictures, thoughts, adventures and so forth. But it will be worth it. It has only taken years to finally set it up and all I had to do was click a few buttons and type a few things. Sad, I know. All the things that happened and won’t get mentioned. I guess we will just have to re-do all of them to post here!

2012 has already started off well with this resolution in full force.

Stay tuned!

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