Hell yeah Doug you look stoic in that photo! So many good photos in here. Makes me want to take my camera and frequency splitboard more often. So good getting out with you Dan and Dave.

February 4 Big beautiful blustery and bluebirdish on the sunnyside of BCC

Snurf expectations were low, mostly just wanting to start building fitness towards Tushar 100k in July. Average 3″ of “dust on crust” at the trailhead with as much as 8″ at 9300′. Hard to tell with the active wind transport.

It was intermittently blustery and bluebird, making for a range of visual pleasures. Winds were active throughout the day and refills were on the house until about noon. To my surprise the riding was an eclectic mix of super fun. Ridgelines were wind pow and sastrugi transitioning to good powder on supportable crust. Midelevations were incredibly fast! Got a bit spooked a few times with the speed I was carrying. Between this and the 6300′ of climbing my quads got a good beat down.

Despite not being blower this was the best all around day of my season thus far. stats and pics below.

Long time no post. Looks like everyone is getting after it. I was have way up bonkers when you guys rode Stair. Looked fun! Everytime I go up there plan on breaking my stairs cherry as my exit run but have always chickened out/get lured back to bonkers. Good work.

Glad you like the fish scales Doug. I have them on my Revelator and I love having them when I need them. Unfortunatlley the slow me down and destroy my switch-falling leaf-bushwhacking moves, more often than I get to use them.

Anyway keep the stoke coming. Last week I used some killer beta by Bucky back from the olden days (2011) to get some sweet basin and range novelty riding in. Long live SB.com!

Because of the inversion there was a pretty deep 6 inches of snow on the roads which made things interesting. Snowdrifts forced us to start at about 5000 feet only to run out of snow by the time the road ended a thousand feet higher only to return shortly after

By the time we topped out there was 5 to 6 feet of snow out of the wind zone.

It was getting really windy and nasty up on the ridge so we had no choice but to endure the 3000’+ fall line and assorted survival riding pitches back to the truck.

Snow was wind fuck to powder to wind buffed powder to wind board to corn to mushed potatoes to dust on talus to grass to 2 miles of suprisingly fun road riding

Hope everyone continues to get after it and keeps this site going!

nice switchback! We need more Bucky!!! 🙂

Keepin the stoke alive…Mr. Wasatch Surf

thinking about it

lowering down to check stability…not a textbook anchor, but it’ll do…one of the rusty ol pitons fell out, the other was still solid? backed it up with a nut…took some time digging around to find an acceptable placement. webbing, biner, nut is up there…nut is set good but prob want to double check it again before weighting it.

thrashed around for a bit while roped up, no slabs, snow was right side up and bonded well, sluffing was minimal, edging was good- no ice

Wasatch Surf… Rapping in

So cool to ride down the mountain and see this, truly majestic! …no photo enhancements

Stoked to tick off the Grunge in blower pow! Bout as good as you can get it. Snow was bonded well, would put the avy conditions for Northern Timp area closer to SLC rather then Provo conditions….moderate with pockets of considerable at upper elevations for wind slabs. then also considerable roughly 8800 feet and lower for damp snow on steeper terrain…we got a small pocket of damp snow to release on a steeper rollover on our exit out. FYI, There’s a nice skinner/boot up Cold Fusion…would be some great turns!

-peace

A few obs from the Uintas – Sunday February 12, 2017
Elev 7500-9000′
Aspects all
Slopes of less than 30°

All aspects showed signs of rain fatigue. From a distance one could easily see runneled snow surface were rain water had flowed down the slopes. Many slopes looked like the calcified deposits in and around geysers and hot springs. It was at once beautiful and disheartening.

Digging down three to four feet on a slope we intended to ride we discovered the upper 10-15″ to be a knife hard frozen snow slab, with 1-6″ of blown snow and facets on top. Presumably, this upper part of the pack absorbed the rain, contracted by several feet in depth (based on a visit a week prior) and then froze into a solid knife hard slab. The next rain event simply ran off this largely impenetrable layer creating the distinct runnel features described above.

Below the frozen layer was a fist hard mix of just about everything imaginable, underlain with the by now infamous Summit county buried surface hoar layer (the distinctive stripe). The ‘stripe’ collapsed at nine taps from the wrist on a 25° slope. The block was easily pulled out with a clean Q1 shear. A menacing mix to have coming at you from the high and steep.

Deeper down the snowpack was saturated and one could easily form an ice ball out of the mess. Further down were large sugary facets. We weren’t going to ride anything over 30° so we dug no further. Besides the upper ice slab was very difficult to cut through.

Throughout the day we encountered settlement and distinct whoomphing as the various layers responded to our weight. There were also many wet slides visible on the upper steep bowls, particularly near rocky outcroppings.

Remarkably as described above, it remained a stellar day out in nature and although it was a challenge to ride an old school deck, booting (rather walking) back up the hill was a breeze. So much so that my partner didn’t even put his skins on and just carried his board in had as well 🙂

@powderjunkie Well it was going off, sort of burned hot and fast… Hopefully people will get after it this weekend and put up some posts.

Its been a while since I’ve been up to PM, but it was my go-to resort back in the day. A nice feature is the bus supported side-country down both sides of the main canyon – unfortunately there is no where to park along said road. What I’ve done in the past is ride the lift with my split, skin to places others cant get to for fresh powder then take the bus back to the car/lodge whenever I’m done or need to refuel. Not a bad way to spend a day with the splitty.

SB has some good side-country, but I don’t know it well and it seems to have had a high number of outobounds fatalities over the years, so….

Overnight parking in BCC has been all but eliminated, don’t know about LCC or the resorts 🙁
There is always the wall-wart parking lots I suppose.

Can anyone else from Utah help this brother out?

Just checkin in with some stoke…Been a great couple of weeks of spring like conditions and now back to full on winter.

I st jumps were riding great during the 2 week spring break

Then it got crazy, winter came back and bitch slapped spring in the face…Had a friend in town and we got a crew together on Thursday and rode Brighton, it was an epic pow day of hucking our meat off any cliff and drop we could find…billy goating into a chute

Saturday felt really good to get back on the split and away from the crowds….Pup doin his part in breaking trail 🙂

Shotgun chutes rode amazeballs …looking down the barrel

up for another…Greybird, good visibility with trees

riders left barrel

It was pretty freaking darn good today. Good blower pow, no wind funk. Good stability. Winds were off and on out of the NW and wind loading upper elevation east facing slopes.

laters
-d

^Damn Dave that third pic from the bottom, so rad!^

February 25-26
Spent the weekend outside the Wasatch.

Saturday I went far into the high backcountry in nasty weather under a moody sky. The day was long and serious. Gained some good beta and found some real gems, but being gripped most of the day was wasn’t all that rewarding.

Sunday I planned to go the BCC glades for a mellow easy day, but traffic was backed onto the 215, so off I went back to that other range. The day was stellar, snow was good, turns were fun. Finally felt comfortable going off some stuff over 40°. So fast, so fun!
Could have benefited from a polarizer and perhaps placed a few of the lines better, but overall I think it turned out well and captures the vibe I was going for.

Try clicking to enlarge, Enjoy!

Saturday – A rare weather window into a rad cirque at 10k’

The rest of the day looked like this

Sunday
Northfacing glades, tubes and steep rollovers – wideshot

Steep northerly sigs, south facing lines across the valley

Looking south – northerly glade to rollover

We tried our hardest to get lost in the central Wasatch and succeeded…adventure, cliffs, and booters, it was a weird one.

OG

Nevertheless powder was had.

Since I don’t have a job I figured I’d go outside and slide on snow.
It’s been a while since I went up to Gobbler’s so that sounded like a good idea.
Didn’t go to the traditional routes, but thats how reclusive weirdos roll.

Just a peak into Alexander Basin, mindful of the hang fire below me I didn’t linger.
1500′ of trees and open glades was fun, another 500′ of natural halfpipe even more so. Yay!