The "Y" Coulior

Anyone who rides snow long enough in Little Cottonwood canyon learns soon enough about the "Y". Whether it is from overhearing others discuss it, seeing ski tracks in what, from the road, appears to be a near-vertical sliver of snow, or, for the lucky, from first-hand experience, the "Y" is the window into the Wasatch backcountry from the passenger window as one rides up the canyon. It is 3,200 vertical feet from the top headwall to the bottom of the final apron, taller than the top of the tram at Snowbird to the bottom of Gad parking lot in what starts at the road and goes up, mostly in plain view, and doesn't vary more than a few degrees from forty.

We've been in a bit of a snow drought in SLC. I hadn't been on my skis in over a week because the snow baked in the sun all day with nothing new to freshen it up. I'm a snob. I only want to ride in it if it is powder! It finally snowed, so yesterday we skied to the saddle between Twin Peaks and Sunrise Peak, skiing a few shots of 5" of pow-pow on top of a carvable crust. It wasn't awesome, only pretty good. It needed more snow. I woke up in the morning around 4:45, and the snow was blasting Sugarhouse. I texted Drew and Tyler. I got a message from Drew. He'd locked himself out of his house the night before, not getting to bed before 2 AM. He'd been sleeping for only two hours before he let me know that he wouldn't be getting up before seven, and that we should let him know where we would be and he might try to catch us. I hadn't heard jack from Tyler, and wanted something worthy to ski so I couldn't go solo, so I looked at the window at the snow coming down, shook my head in dismay, took off my ski clothes and snuggled in back next to Leia. "It'll be nice to sleep in until seven!" I thought in consolation as I spooned in next to her warm body.

Just before I fell back asleep, Tyler calls. He's ready and waiting. He just hadn't gotten back to me. I told him our plan was jacked, and that we'd make a new plan at seven. At that point, there was no consolation about it, it would be nice to sleep until seven! Sorry Tyler.

By 8:30 the sun is up. I feel a bit out of place driving to the canyons in the daylight. Still, though, I'm stoked. We are having our safety meeting on the drive with some Culture playing in the background as we discuss the plan. The Alta snow report says 10" new. On top of the snow from yesterday it will be awesome, and the sloughs will be manageable. A repeat in Coalpit would have been awesome, but it was too late in the day to get there safely. We settle on Maybird, getting laps on easier angles. This plan, though, lacks the urgency that we're beginning to feel. We know that the season can't keep this up forever, and the chance to ride the classic lines shouldn't be passed up. Then, as Drew gazed out the passenger window, he looked back at me and smiled. "The Y!"

I slam on the brakes and pull into the unplowed parking lot. He had spoke in the nick of time. I get stuck in the snow with the truck half-way in, the back-end still out in the road and slowing the canyon traffic on a powder day. It seems deep, and I may not be able to get out easily. "I'm down," is the consensus from all our mouths, so the truck goes into four-wheel and we're in. Committed.

After the treacherous river crossing, we throw our skis on our packs and start booting. There is no skinning on this tour- this time we go on foot. From the bottom I look up. With the first step I get closer to finishing over three-thousand feet of hiking through snow, sometimes icy, sometimes hip deep, in ski boots with a pack and skis on my back, a height that is over twice the tallest building in the world. On the trek up, there would be only one platform where the tree of us could all stand without the pull of gravity at our heels and the weight of our packs, urging us back into oblivion below. Here we would pow-wow (food, water, rejuvenation). Kicking steps, booting, slogging or whatever you call it cannot sweeten the experience. It's brutal. To know that the step you now take is only one in a string of thousands can be a mental strain on top of the obvious physical strain. The perch offered us a respite from the strain.

I understand that "couloir" is the French word for "hallway." I might be wrong. In the Y couloir the application of this term is clear. From our stance in the perch, we looked down on an icy section that we had just ascended. Drew had been putting in the pack below this section, and I took over for the ice. Because he snowboards, he gets to wear soft boots that are more comfortable than plastic boots, but can't punch through the ice like the solid end of a ski boot. The ice is hard, but I can force in three or four inches, and do, making my way slowly toward the perch. During our pow-wow, Tyler makes grim predictions about skiing that section. If one of us lost control on that ice, it would take much speed before he would be pinballing against the sides of the rock hallway we were in. Drew was certain that it would be fine. My thoughts were aligned with Drew and cautious of Tyler. All though people like the game of pinball, nobody ever wants to BE the pinball!

More booting. The snow in the couloir is uneven. In some places it is down to the ice that formed over the last drought while in others it is over hip deep. What had caused this uneveness is explained best by the "angle of repose" principle. Any material substance has an angle of repose, the angle at and below which it will be at rest- sand, soda cans, salamanders and snow. If one of these was dropped from one point and allowed to build up into a cone shape, the angle of that cone would be the angle of repose. If, say, a pile of sand was built up, any sand steeper than the angle of the cone would eventually break-off and tumble down the cone. The angle of repose for snow centers around 37 degrees. The deep sections of snow were deposits of snow from above that sluffed off of the slope because the slope was too steep to hold the snow. The icy sections were the base where the snow was released. The skiing would be great if we could maintain fall-lines in the stuff that was soft enough for turns.

After more than four hours of slogging uphill through snow we near the top. The headwall is the steepest section of the couloir at what I would guess is near 50 degrees. It is so steep that it feels like we are on a ladder. The snow starts to change and the base is less supportable so it is more like a tread-ladder where we fight for each upward step. Tyler is a few steps above me. He is wrestling for purchase and kicks hard into the slope. I watch as a crack starts from his boot and shoots horizontally across the headwall for fifty feet. The top ten inches becomes fluid and moves down the slope like silent water. The headwall, surprisingly, is treed, and I can't see how far the sluff runs as it disappears in the pines and out-of-sight, but it was a lot and was gone in a hurry. Tyler and Drew didn't hear it or see it. The few seconds it took them to respond to my shouts was enough for the slide to be out of gone. Tyler, at least could see the crown and was startled to see what he had done. He looked down at me. My pole was in the slide path, but I was not. That amount of snow wouldn't bury a person. The fear is getting swept downhill out of control, especially when there are trees and cliffs below. If the snow above me would have went I suppose it could have been enough to knock me off of my feet and send me into a tree. The top of the Y would be a bad place to get hurt fo' sho'.

We spend a few minutes stomping out a platform above a tree. This one, unlike the shelter of the first perch, came with its own vertigo. Here we pow-wow. I take some video. Getting skis on is a delicate procedure. Any inability to properly place gear could result in loss of that gear. As well as being a bad place to get hurt, this would be a bad place to see a ski accidentally unlodge and torpedo down the slope! Below us is Little Cottonwood Road. It is a constant point-of-reference on the way up and down the Y. At first in the coulior the traffic is faintly audible, especially as people gear-down to check their speed before the big corner. Further up, there is only an occasionally percussive rumbling to be heard from the bigger trucks hauling luxuries for the resorters at Snowbird and Alta. The road becomes a visual experience like the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland where things are happening but no sound results from it, like an ant farm. I see the tram. I figure Sport is probably skiing right now, but he is far to small to see.

I get first line and opt for the upper bowl, half of which has already slid leaving only an icy base behind. I hoped to ski the fresh snow next to the fracture line, but as I approached it, it all slid as well. I find myself in a predicament. All of the fresh yummy snow has sluffed and ran for who-knows-how-far. The edges of my skis now clawed into icy snow on a fifty degree slope above trees and unknown conditions below. I cowardly slide down twenty feet to where the angle eases off before making my first turn. Still icy. I pull another safety turn. It is still icy and I slide a way on my edges. My stomach unsettles. I steer gingerly away from the trees. Then I hit a soft spot. My turn releases the snow around me and it sluffs at the same speed I am beginning to turn. I make a few turns in my slough and cut out to the side, taking the risk of turning into some small trees. I figure the trees will hold the snow better. They do. I watch the sluff run past me. I cut back into the path because it is still to steep for tight tree turns. The sluffs don't carry much snow with them and soon I am in steep powder heaven. The turns are like falling into feathers. My stomach relaxes. This is what I came for.

I find a safe place to stop and watch my boys. Drew takes a bold line through the trees and blasts into the open slope. He cuts some big, fast turns through a bowl before cutting into safety. Tyler skis the nasty-lasties on my slope. I watch and hear the death turns he performs with precision before hitting the softies on the opposite side of the bowl from me. He charges past me through the pow-pow, being chased by his sluff. For partners, these two bros are golden. Few people are willing and able to get up early for serious backcountry snow on such a consistent basis. They have been the perfect compliment to the consistent stellar snow of 07-08.

We continue down in this yo-yo fashion. The road becomes closer and bigger. The couloir is wide enough for all of us to be skiing powder lines. The spots where the sluff piles up are like gigantic pillows to float through, turning us into transient submarines as the snow piles against the chest and from there over the head. Those riding below disappear in puffs of cold smoke. All of this is framed by granite-walled sides, partly cloudy skies above and the huge south face of Twin Peaks as the background. Gorgeous!

Finally the granite walls terminate and the snow spills out onto the apron and down to the river. We stop at the bottom of the apron to look up and to celebrate. A fellow Drew knows from works hiked by and stopped to chat. Out on the road we see Nate and Eliot drive by. It is good to be part of a culture that values the quality of life, and choose a life that includes time outdoors because of all that nature offers, experiences like this. Experiences that will fall short in this and every written description, but one that are commonly understood. Praise to those living close to their dreams!


LIFE IS LONG




Note: For those of you disciplined enough to endure my dribble, I'll let you know that I entered the Powderkeg backcountry ski race. Results and pictures can be found at http://www.bdel.com/powderkeg/

Coalpit

This is how the schedule has gone so many times this year, far more than ever before, and how it went yesterday morning. I get up at 3:30 AM, sometimes before the alarm goes off and put the teapot on the stove. I check the gear to be sure it is dry enough. The teapot whistles. I pull it off the stove and shut the door to the bedroom so Leia can sleep peacefully through the ritual. I start the mate (mah-tay, I can't figure out the accent on the keyboard!) and put the rest of the hot water in the thermos. I eat, drink mate. I put my climbing skins on my skis so I don't have to do it in the cold. I finish packing my backpack with food, water, shovel, probe, avalanche beacon and a bunch of other stuff that I figure I need because I have forgotten it in the past and wished I didn't. I write down where I am going and with whom I am traveling on the white board, kiss Leia and answer her that I have written down that which I wrote. By 4:30 I have Andrew and Tyler in the truck. We prepare to adjust our altitude. We drink mate. By 5:30 AM we are at the White Pine trailhead with our skis on, except Tyler. We stopped at his house and there were no lights on. He didn't answer his phone either. He called, though, right as we were about to lose reception in Little Cottonwood Canyon. He said he was coming. We told him to go fast and we would tour slowly to start.

On the trail, the cold of the parking lot fades. I remind myself every morning that, even though I am freezing when I'm getting my gear together, once we start skinning my body will warm itself. And it does. The last to lose the coldness are my fingers. Soon enough they are warm too. We work our way up and across the side of the canyon passed the White Pine and the Red Pine drainages. The weather is clear and we look down on the Sandy nightscape and the lights of the few cars going along the bottom of the canyon. By the time we reach the Maybird drainage the sky lightens. It begins with a gradual light blue, and then suddenly the peaks on the north side of the canyon go bright pink. The color is reflected in all the snow around resulting in a dull but discernible glow. Though I've seen it an uncanny number of times this season, it doesn't lose its brilliance.

We've been breaking trail since the trail split in White Pine- we are the first ones here since the last storm. Everything is uniformly covered in a blanket of white. We are the first to disturb it by cutting a skin track direct as possible to our goal. The extra effort to put in the track made it inevitable for Tyler to catch-up, and he did. As I was relieving myself, reveling in the early morning glow, Tyler came flying around the corner and got an eyefull! He had put on a brutal pace to be able to ski today's line with us. He looked it too, all red and sweaty. He was dripping so hard that icicles were dangling from his beard, breathing hard as an angry, restrained child.

By about nine AM we stood at the top of the Hogum 500. The resorts were opening and folks there were already talking about yesterday's powder. In front of us was over 1500 vertical feet without a track but the one left behind by us. We had been eyeing our line and the approach to it all along our way up the ridge that separates Maybird and Hogum drainages. The top of the Coalpit drainage could be seen just to the right of the top of a long narrow couloir called the Hypodermic Needle, obvious just right-of-center in the photo. To get there we would have to skin up the slope toward the Needle, and, just before the bottom of the narrow section, traverse the slope above the cliffs to the right to access the ridge. The first 1000 ft. of the Coalpit headwall are visible in the photo. But first before we coulkd begin the ascent toward the Needle, someone had to ski all of this glorious powder!

By eleven AM the temperature was heating the slopes we were on. The apron of the Needle, where we were putting in our skin track, faces Northeast. It receives morning sun. When the sun firsts hits the slope, the air is still too cold for the snow to be affected. By now it is warm, and the snow has started to change. The top layer is getting moist. It sticks to my climbing skins and ski making me carry an extra ten pounds of weight up the mountain and the skins don't slide smoothly on the snow. Worse, if it gets to wet it could slide out from underneath us. The slope we are going up is the perfect angle to avalanche it the conditions are right.

The scariest part is the traverse above the cliffs. I watch Drew as he moves into the danger zone. The snow here is variable, with most of it in good condition, but some spots are icy where they have been buffed by the wind. In one of these spots Drew kicks out a pin. He says it is a freak occurrence that has only happened a couple of times in all his years of backcountry skiing. Now, perched on an icy spot on a slope over 35 degrees hanging above cliffs and certain death, he reaches down to save one-half of his snowboard from sliding all the way down to the bottom of Hogum Fork while balancing precariously on the other half of the snowboard. Ho got it all under control, put his board back on, and continued skinning to the ridge. My turn.

My program was to overcome the terror and the vertigo and the risk of the snow deciding to slide whilst I was crossing above the cliffs by staring at the three feet of skin-track in front of me and skinning like hell to the ridge. It worked. The dragon left me be again today. At the ridge I had my first view ever from the Coalpit headwall. I smiled knowing that I was going to ski this line. It may take eight hours to get to the top of it and only twenty minutes of skiing (or probably less!) to come down. Every step on the skin track (a reward in itself) is worth it.

The Descent:

First we put our skis on while balancing on the ridge. There are no good spots. I lean against a rock and keep one foot planted in the snow. I have to take my skis off of my backpack, which involves swinging the weight of the pack around me and bumping it into rocks, either of those likely stealing my balance and sending me into the rocks below. Each one goes on like surgery. Worst besides falling myself would be to lose a ski. The only "safe" way down is on top of them. Down below I can see the road in Little Cottonwood Canyon. I think about the dangerous descent and long hike through powder that I would face if I mishandled my ski, take my time and I get everything on without screwing up.

The headwall drops for 1,800 vertical feet. The top section was wind-buffed, icy and required some safety skiing for sure. Some sections were soft, encouraging faster turns, but soon enough turned again to ice. If you wrecked it would be a fast ride to the bottom!

The bottom half of the headwall, brought good powder turning. We pow-wowed for a while to admire the surroundings. None of us had ever been there before, and now we had the whole drainage to ourselves! Underway again we skied another near 2,000 vertical foot shot of the greatest snow on earth, and finished with a narrow gully that rode like a slide at a waterpark that spit you out over a waterfall into the bottom of Little Cottonwood Canyon. In the summer the waterfall makes the entrance into Coalpit nearly impossible. In winter it fills in with snow and is easily skied!

Coalpit Headwall S4

Another great day brought to you by '07-'08!

My first time...I'm so nervous!

It's winter. Leia is ready for the cold and snow to end and the spring to get going. I'm content with the possibilities of record snowfall in the Wasatch this year, and hope that it doesn't stop until June. I got Leia a puffy coat for Christmas so that my exuberance over the snow is more tolerable for her. It makes her arms look like she could beat the crap out of anyone, but don't worry, she's really a nice girl with slim and sexy arms!

Today I skinned to the ridgeline between Big and Little Cottonwood canyons to discover the backdoor to one of the chutes that descend from the ridge directly to the road in Little Cottonwood. I was out alone under blue skies in the upper reaches of Mill B South in the Twin Peaks Wilderness Area without another person's tracks visible, even though it has been days and days since our last storm. It is good to know that there are still places that are untouched, where a person can experience real solitude. It is also good to know that my truck is waiting for me, ready to take me back to my sweet girl and cold beer in the fridge! (For the record, only the latter is in the fridge!) Options are wonderful, especially when it means you get to visit these palces and don't have to spend a night alone in the middle of freakin' nowhere!

As I carefully approached the ridge, not wanting to accidentally fall over the other side, my first thought was, "What the hell am I doing here alone!" My purpose was to check it out, to discover the secret passage to 3,300 vertical feet of pure fall-line skiing so to return later with others and ski the line more safely. After the initial shock of seeing dinky cars way down there on that dinky road and feeling that I could toss a snowball out in that direction and have it land on some New York tourist's car at terminal velocity, my next thought was, "I could ski this right now, even though I am alone!" There was a passage through the rocky ridgeline that would put me on snow, giving my skis something to ride all the way to the road.

After a few moments the vertigo and excitement lost control and my instinct to survive returned, I decided to descend that way I had come up. It was already passed noon, and the shot faces south and was inevitably heating up. Besides, Leia had told me, as usual, to be safe. She is a smart girl. Not two minutes after I had made my decision to play it safe and had started to prepare for the descent, a wet slab avalanche released and went cruising down Little Pine in the exact path I had momentarily intended to ski. Some of you may attribute this to the still small voice. I call it the universe continuing in its conspiracy to keep me alive for another adventure another day. A rose by any other name still makes me happy to be alive!

The first photo is looking down at the Little Cottonwood Canyon Road from the ridgeline today. The second one shows my tracks, both up and down, from the ridge. Down was much faster! Also there is a video from a couple of days ago in Hogum Fork in the Broken Plate couloir-enjoy!



PURA VIDA!