Videos from the past

Here are a couple videos that I put together from the past winter. It seems that all the good footage never got recorded. Huh......I'll have to work on that.

http://vimeo.com/15211495

http://vimeo.com/11177294

The Oquirrhs

Well I finally went on my first "ski" in and camp trip and actually it was the first time I've ever overnight camped during the winter. So a couple weeks ago Cardello, Thor and I decided to test out the snowpack in the Oquirrh Mountain range which is located on the western edge of the Salt Lake valley. It's not a hugh mountain range but it boasts peaks that top out just over 10,600 ft. It's only thirty or so miles long and about half that in width and doesn't recieve nearly the amount of snow or human traffic which is actually why we went. The Wasatch has been plagued with an extremely weak snowpack this year and we were hoping to find more stable conditions to the west. Less snow doesn't usually lean towards stability, it actually seems to predict less stable conditions, but we felt a little better about this terrain because of the lower elevation and somewhat more predictable snowpack that we were planning on skiing. Well enough about snow talk for now.

We started from Salt Lake around 9 or so in the morning and assumed we would get to the parking lot around 11, which actually happend! We had forty to fifty pound packs and the best touring setups money could buy. Actually.....Chris has the best touring setup, Thor was on a borrowed pair and I have the worst setup money can buy. We did take this into consideration and thankfully for the trusted route planner that Cardello is the tour into base camp wasn't too bad. It consisted of about an hour of skinning up a service road and then me immediately switching to tow mode when Thor arrived on the sled! Chris "bring back the turn" Cardello was set on skinning into camp free of mechanized support and he did. So I grabbed the tow rope and said my best to Chris and off we went. Chris ended up catching up to us in about thirty seconds as we got the sled stuck a mere sixty feet from our departure spot. All part of the plan though as we needed Chris to help us heave the sled from the trench it dug. So we were off again and it worked out pretty well. Thor and I only got stuck once more and we decided to turn around there anyway and Cardello got his exercise. Well thats enough words. Here are some pics. Enjoy.

Cardello not looking too happy about Thor already leaving us.

Trail head

Getting out of tour mode and into tow mode!

Nice and stuck

Into the pow

Good looking Gents

Solitude

CT-14; ECT-18=Thumbs up

My first turns

Happy about the run

Looking up at our tracks from camp

Should've brought the bivy!

Looking down from camp

Sunset on top

Nice to have a fire

What a difference a day makes

Cardello was still pleased

Bringing back the turn

Nice light on the way out



Frozen pie and beer!!

Test video

So I just got a Go Pro HD helmet cam and wanted to test it out yesterday with all the new snow we got over the past week. To be exact we got 7 feet in seven days. That helped our base tremendously but more so calmed the nerves of all that felt this winter was going to be a bust. The snow will always come but not always in the amounts we want. So anyway this video is the first two runs from yesterday. Definitely nothing spectacular but it was just a test run. Oh, one thing I don't like about all the new snow is it makes many of our favorite features much smaller and brings out "Joe Gnarly" is mass amounts. Can't complain though, just got to accept it. I'm hoping to make it out in the slackcountry as soon as conditions permit but until then it's inbounds fun.

Winter Woes

So it has been a very slow winter for me. Utah hasn't been getting anywhere close to the normal amount of snow. In fact I read last night on the Utah Avalanche website that the Wasatch is at 50% of normal. That sucks....... but it's bound to happen sometime. So I've been picky about the days that I ski because I want to continue to stay healthy and strong and I've found out that skiing hardpack aggressively day after day takes a toll on my and eternally sore tibias. I think actually the shin bang wouldn't return as fast if I didn't ski with my friends who feel its necessary to approach the cirque traverse at around 60 mph and keep that speed up even though there is a bombardment of uneven ice chunder mixed in with some pepper and twigs. I guess its all about finding the line through there, the line in which I have not found yet. Beside that the inbounds is fun as long as you keep the edges sharp and stay on edge. So what have I been doing? Well I ski about every other day and I continue to lift but I've also started a new term this week so I'm now trying to get ahead because next week there is supposed to be a pattern shift in the weather and I'm really looking forward to any new snow that comes our way. I've also just put together a slideshow located to the right of this post. Click on it and it will go full screen, I think. Just some pics of soft snow because we don't have any. Enjoy.