A little bit of this........: February 2010

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.