A few weekends ago Mar123 and I ticked off a line I have been wanting to do since moving to Utah.
Dave is a fucking animal. Please don’t ever get hardboots, I will not be able to catch up with you.
God awful fog prolonged a sleepy 5am drive south. A quick ascent up the road gave way to a never ending treadmill to the summit.

Dave in the lead with our objective in the background

On the summit ridge after hours of skinning and booting. Rad animal tracks on the ridge, not sure what it was. Claws out so canine or kind of looked like small wolvering tracks, but I don’t know if those exist around these parts.

Rad Visuals

Looking north at the southern Wasatch

Dave glad to be on top of the Wasatch

The entrance into this sneak couloir from the summit was sketch, Dave opened up as soon as the snow was there.

Entering the NW couloir

At high speed into variable snow

Dave in the massive couloir with North Peak in the background.

after that we suffered through thousands of feet of mank. thank god the gas station had beer.

Damn you – I should have heeded your warning, now my three week long migraine is back 😉

That bottom part of Nebo looks super fun, not sure about the rest. But then I’m the guy who cross country snowboards ten miles into the Uintas and ten miles out without ever transitioning and calls it an epic day 🙂

I’m just stoked that your stoked, especially since I’ve spent most of the last month of weekends sick 🙁

Well done!

I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus from all things central Wasatch this year. I spent a week and a half in Canada. Did a week at Fairy Meadows. That place is ridiculous. I highly recommend going if you can.

This weekend I went a rode a line I have eyed since mej did it several years ago. Went and skied the NE couloir on Lone and it was by far the most puckered I have ever been. I was disappointed to see Noah H. skied it the day before as we had been talking about it since I got back from Canada. Alas, the weekend warrior backfired on me.

Here is John skinning up the boulder field.

John stood on top. I was too scared to climb on anymore rocks after we booted up the couloir that’s between the two summits that had a nice little crux in it. I wanted to take a photo but didn’t want to fool with camera or phone on such a steep slope.

Keenan skiing down. It was was steeper than I thought it would be.

Then yesterday I took the dog to the southern wasatch so she could stretch her legs after being cooped up inside all day Saturday. She was stoked.

It’s the last on WhitePine. 🙂

Yeah, I need some updates. Nat and I may re-direct our 2 week road trip from Moab to SLC if it looks like the end of the first week and second week of April produces.
We’d be stoked to get out with some of you Utah splitters.

I’ve always enjoyed participating in the fringes and not the mainstream. Grew up as a skateboard/punk rock kid, started splitboarding to get away from the bro-brah scene all my friends were in. That scene is now in the backcountry, working at backcountry.com all I hear is asshats talking about their “sick-gnar tours”. It’s the last thing I want to talk about, but it’s been my identity for a while. So what do you do when everyone you hate starts doing what you love?

I’m personally really struggling with that question this season; fly fishing, climbing, splitboarding, they all have lost their soul for me. Lately I have been trying to focus on the aspects of those activities that I really enjoy and just say fuck the rest. That means getting back to the art and enjoyment of going out. Which can even be a contradiction, I enjoy taking photos and videos. However if I share them am I just contributing to the complete shit spray that consumes my phone and computer screen on a 24/7 basis?

Anyway thanks for the question Whitepine it’s nice to actually write down some of those thoughts. I quite touring on 2/7, but since Jeff was in town from Hawaii I skinned up and head out for some great march pow. yesterday I did my favorite little mickey mouse alpine climbing route and rode holy mole which was new to me. Here is some video spray, I really hope people think I’m gnarly and will tell me how cool I am 😉

Good stuff. I was just thinking about this last week…

As I look back over the years, I see lots of things that could have sucked the soul out of snowboarding. But I refused to let them. My love of carving on a snowboard, being in the mountains, and comradery with fellow riders was and still is way too precious.

It’s the people that can bum me out.

In the olden days, snowboarders were so rare that, upon seeing another rider, we’d automatically join up and ride together because, well, that’s just what you did. You both just knew about this thing, and you had to share the stoke. It was authentic and raw and fun, not a scene. That was the culture.

That culture’s now rare. My way of protesting its loss is to keep it alive. I make riding around others a deliberate choice. And when I do, I try to be the ambassador of snowboarding stoke by being positive, outgoing, or encouraging a lone rider to join our group or share a beer after.

On the other hand, when it’s solitude I seek–and often it is–there’s always another ridge over I can push out to.

wasatch surf wrote:

I miss the days of 20page long conversations and threads (russman era).

Let’s be honest… no one missed THAT era. 🙂 Just kidding Russman sure has mellowed out a ton of late. Or maybe just got bored with the site like everyone else.

To be honest I didn’t feel like there was a ton of chest beating going on here. At least in the Utah conditions thread. I always love seeing people’s photos. Especially, now being a dad who can’t get out as often as I’d like. I live vicariously through your art.

The things I miss the most are the contributions to valuable gear/equipment discussions. Tips and tricks. Discussions about how to optimize the experience through DIY mods and home brew tweaks. Those are the things that can’t be shared on facebook. Because, if you haven’t noticed, the half-life of a facebook post is about 45 minutes. If someone didn’t “Like” it or comment on it in that time, most likely it’ll never be seen again. Which is why the forums are such a great place for discussion. A discussion in a forum can take place over the course of days, months, years and it is searchable via Google. It’s a deeper more meaningful conversation with some personality.

In the last few years, I’ve really dropped off my Facebook usage because of this very problem. Its not a place for conversation anymore. It’s a place for “clickbait” and “Look what I did, my life is better than yours” in an attempt to get the most “likes” we can and the occasional comment.

Splitboard.com and forums in general are different and hope they never go away. It just suprises me that with the explosion of interest in the sport, there are fewer people participating. I don’t know if reverting back to PHBB3 is the answer or what but it seemed like the conversion to WordPress was the start of the decline. And it saddens me.

wasatch surf wrote:

the motivation to go. Lot’s of self doubt if it will be worth it, will there be 100 people, blah blah blah.

I hear ya, I’ve probably missed a lot of good turns with plenty of elbow room feeling the same way-that everything in the half-day realm would be well trampled already.

The change from the early 2000s to the mid/late 2000s was impressive, and particularly tough in the recent low snow years where only the deepest snow is safe and it was limited to the usual zones. Then by spring when deep instabilities were curing in the outlying areas, the low and mid elevation snowpack had already left the building.

Nice^^ Looks like its been good up there the last few weeks!!

yeah some good thoughts shared above thanks for posting!

Wish I had some stoke to share but haven’t been too motivated to get out, probably due to the lack of snow we had in February…although it was stable and you could ski anything you wanted.

Started out touring strong this year then kinda was over it…For me mountain biking has taken over since February, between digging and jumping up at I street, Putting laps on Bobsled, Working on the backyard pump track, and occasional trips down south its what I’m passionate about right now. Building trails is fun and allows me to get creative and its nice to contribute something that hopefully will be around for a long time and have others enjoy it too.

I think with backcountry touring the burn out factor hits much faster then with mountain biking, I don’t think I ever really get burnt out on mountain biking. I supposed some of the reasons are ones that were already mentioned like, attitudes, Instagram, chasing a limited resource(powder). Touring can be stressful at times, like Dan said, is it going to be good?, Who am I going to tour with? Are there going to be tracks in the line? Go to bed early, can’t sleep cause I’m stressed, gotta wake up at 4am, Avalanches etc… With mountain biking you don’t have to deal with that stuff you just go, and people aren’t really ever spraying about it either… like “it was sooooo good, best day everrrrr” crap.

When it comes to the forum you are definitely getting a lot of competition from Instagram. I don’t want to judge people who do social media stuff, I think its a great tool for keeping in touch with folks, but in my opinion its way abused to the point of a lot of people think they are a damn celebrity…ya know look at me I’m a big deal I got (x) amount of followers then that attitude/ego gets carried into the backcountry.

Personally I like the community here, having the dialogue, posting observations and stoke. I wish it was more active like it used to be. One other contributing factor could be the last few winters have been below average too.

first world problems, really all that above is not a big deal just ranting a bit 🙂

whelp, ride on!! hope to see some more shred shots!!

-d