Early season Cirque
November 11, '21
Ah steep skiing. So much fun. And when you combine steep skiing with weekday crowds, powder, (decent) stability, adventure, a BOOTER, good friends (Ben), and new friends (A), it's even more fun.
As humble government employees, Ben and I had Veterans Day off. It had snowed the day before and we had done our standard weekday 4k, but we still wanted to stay out all day, even if that meant lapping something ten times.
Ben and I met up at a mild 8 AM and headed up. The plan was for A, less quick on the draw in the mornings, to meet us up at Alta and join for a few hours. Ben and I had been in the Supreme area last week and it was pretty bare, but we thought that with 8-10 more inches of medium density on the ground, it'd be good to go.
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| Ben ascending |
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| Fun, surfy halfpipe |
We ascended Supreme and followed the ridge around. After some supervised jump turn practice on an unconsequential slope for Ben and I, we started up the S ridge of Mt. Tuscarora, which looked like:
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| As has been asked by many a chuter: "What was wrong with skiing powder, again?" |
I quickly indemnified Ben against any base or edge damage he would incur and promised I'd split a ski tune with him if he kept a good attitude. And after 20 minutes or so of adventure skinning, we were at the top of a bony Tuscarora. I think I've seen some people skiing the Seagull already this year, which IIRC Mclean says is rocky even in normal conditions. Crazy.
We soon topped out Wolverine and ventured into the Scythe. The storm had come in with quite a bit of wind (>20 mph // 40g on ridgelines), and it was still blowing pretty aggressively, so we were definitely on alert for surface instabilities from storm snow + wind transport. We identified a few pillows on the left side of the line that looked suspect. A went first, stomping and cutting the suspect areas aggressively. And then he was off:
I was next. I stomped on the same suspect areas and whooped my way down the first half of the line!
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| Me |
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| Left side was suspect but didn't move; right side quickly seemed hollow & would pitch you into the rock. |
Ben came down last and after a brief issue with his boot's problematic walk mode (he has since discarded the boots, thank goodness) cleaned the line.
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| View from the midpoint regroup (the crook of the dogleg). Ben navigates the choke that was guarding the way in the low-tide conditions. |
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| A makes it look easy as he starts the second half. |
We spilled into the Cirque, our skis coreshot free and our spirits high. For Ben, it was one of the more serious lines he had done, and he had done it, in his words, "without fear." So great. High fives were exchanged and gratefulness indicated for the beta, and we put skins on to ascend Granny chute.
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| Ben followed by A, with attitude. |
As I said earlier, we were thinking about new snow instabilities, especially wind slabs. The day prior, people had observed storm slabs popping out on E aspects, but we (or I, at least) thought that was less worrisome than wind-transported snow because the storm had stopped over 24 hrs ago.
We began ascending and stopped a few times to talk about conditions. We observed some small cracks on the corners of the skin track (inside of the corner) and active wind transport. Most worrisome for me was a hasty column that I dug which had a pretty low-effort planar shear on what looked like the new snow interface. This was a bit confusing because, like I said, I was mostly worried about wind slabs, not the new snow interface. I wasn't really sure how to read that result. In the block, it did seem like there were two subtly different layers: the storm snow and a 2-3" layer of presumably wind-transported snow on top (locally variable). If that were true, my thinking was that the wind layer was not a problem. Any "slide" would be no more than a sluff (obv could be much bigger in some places). But I definitely wasn't sure and Ben and I both leaned on A's experience.
In retrospect, maybe two other things were happening: first, maybe I should not have expected to find a difference between the storm snow and the wind blown snow because the storm came in with such high winds and it was so recently storming. Maybe there wasn't really a period during which the storm snow had clearly settled and then new wind-transported snow had piled on top. Or, maybe the high winds that we observed hadn't been going on for a long time. In that case, it was reasonable to think that the 2-3" layer that I thought I was observing was all the wind-transported snow there was (again, just in the spot of course) and so the wind-transported danger was manageable. But I really don't know.
Anyways, A thought we should start booting up Granny and Ben and I agreed. A took the lead and promptly dropped me and Ben despite being, according to him, on a 20 hour sleep deficit over the past four days.
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| Booter SZN!!! YES! |
We topped out safely and decided to head to Patsy. A was heading home and Ben and I needed lunch. The descent off of Patsy proper was hella variable, but the snow in Patsy trees was soft, settled, and totally untracked! We got to a turnaround point and parted ways.
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| Ben sitting in our lunch alcove. No doubt searching in his bag for a bean burrito while remarking about how easy he thought the booter was (he was in third...). |
Bellies full and all of Grizzly Gulch blissfully devoid of anyone else, we headed up for three more gluttonous powder laps.
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| Untracked Patsy trees!! |
Every rock, bush, and twig that we scraped past on the exit made clear why Patsy was untracked. Seems like because the ascent gets burnt off by the late fall sun, the approach is pretty foreboding and doesn't seem promising. We had approached from Wolverine and hadn't been turned off. Good to remember!!
We finished the day with 8 hours and 8k elevation although Strava somehow downgraded my all-important metrics to 6.8k. Must be because I'm not a premium subscriber. All in all probably one of my top three days on skis. So happy 😊
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