May 9, 2000
"How Do We Begin To Covet?"
-Hanibal Lector, Silence of the Lambs
©Aaron Lefohn 2000
The obsession began in the third week of February 1997. I was skiing at Alta on a graduate student recruiting trip paid for by the University of Utah. I remember catching glimmers of it from the car window on the way up the canyon, but I wasn't permitted a long, lustful gawk until I was riding up the Albion chair for the first time. There, just across the highway from Alta and clearly out of resort bounds, stood the proud, three thousand-foot vertical, south face of Mt. Superior. From Alta it looks ludicrously steep, but the multiple tracks traced down the face inferred otherwise.The infatuation has continued since moving to Utah two years ago--green with envy everytime I'd see a new set of tracks on it. Despite having friends who've skied it, I had yet to set ski edges on the face until a month and a half ago when my 200 pound Russian friend, Misha, and I skied a couloir that flanks the western edge of the face--the "Suicide Couloir." Suicide's name is a gross overstatement. It too looks nearly vertical from Alta, but never tilts more than 40 degrees away from horizontal. The descent was capped by Misha and I both dropping off of a 10 foot cornice as our entrance exam into the couloir, but the snow was horrible. We had chosen one of the infamous Utah spring mornings when the snow has not refrozen the night before. Growing up in Montana, I thought that all mountains were supposed to refreeze at night during the spring--and even the summer--but not in Utah. The experience could more easily be likened to water skiing than snow skiing. Even bringing your weight to center on the skis would send the tips diving under the bottomless mush. The only way to turn was to drive from the backseat--gaper style. Skiing suicide was a minor conquest. The face still loomed 2000 feet above the top of Suicide's cornice.
Watching the weather every day--waiting to see the predicted low in Salt Lake drop to 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below--the magic number that means the snow at 10,000 feet has refrozen overnight. Last night was such a night. Misha and I have repeatedly tried to leave town by 5:30am for these springtime, before-work endeavors, but have failed every time. This morning was no exception. I arrived at his house at 5:35am, loaded the car after waiting 20 minutes for Misha to finish getting ready, then realized I'd forgotten by ski boots and helmet. We finally hit the interstate at 6:15am.
It had been three weeks since I'd been up Little Cottonwood Canyon and was shocked to see decimation of the snow pack. What had been a meter-high snow bank next to the road was now seven-foot high willows. We had not chosen our poison for the morning yet upon arrival at Alta. Our two options were Wolverine cirque, where I'd skied with my friend David Maas three weeks ago, or the south face of superior. We decided that if the snow was too soft, we'd go for a mountaineering adventure instead of skiing. Since the snow had receded so much from the road, it was difficult to determine how hard it was--but there was frost on all windshields of the parked cars. Misha wanted to go to Wolverine, but the combination of the thick willows and running stream that now marked the beginning of the trail as well as the look on my face that said I wanted a new adventure sent us back down the road to the base of the south face of superior. We had agreed five minutes before to leave the skis behind and go for a fast-and-light mountaineering trip up the peak. You must understand, however, the piercing volume of the siren song that was heard as the two of us looked up at three thousand feet of possibly-perfect-snow couloir, coming directly from the 11,000+ foot summit. The skis and boots came.
The sun was just cresting Wolverine Peak as we started up at 7:15am. Our ascent route was to take us to the right (East) of the south face proper to avoid being in the path of rockfall and avalanche debris released by the rising sun. The first snow we reached, a hundred feet or so from the car, escalated our confidence--it was firm. We assumed we could count on the south face couloir having the same snow conditions. The snowfield we were climbing dead-ended in a recently exposed cliff and so we traversed to our left onto a rocky ridge. The rest of the ascent was spent mostly on lightly snow-covered rocks instead of the snowfields. It turned out that the snowfields up higher on the face had a considerable amount of new snow on them--it had recently rained down below but snowed higher up. Any attempt to venture away from the rocks into the snow resulted in a waist-deep plunge to the base of the snowpack.
Our not-so-well-put-together rock ridge, however, became too steep as we approached the summit ridge, and so we were forced to traverse down and to our right across a snowfield to gain the ridge at a lower point. By the time we reached the ridge, about 9:15am, our confidence in the snow pack had vanished. It appeared that what we'd hoped was a consolidated, isothermal, stable snow pack was instead six to eight inches of new slop on top of an ice layer. Less than ideal conditions in which to ski a three thousand foot, forty to forty-five degree, south facing couloir. We ate lunch on the ridge, starring longingly but exhausted at the summit. The top looked to still be an hour or so away. It was not really very far in distance, but the going would be slow due to the narrow, exposed ridge, some scrambling over loose rocks, and the inevitable post-holing that would happen everytime the rock gave way to patches of snow. To the North were the famous "Cardiac" and "Benson and Hedges" ridges. Both ridges hold numerous steep couloirs in the winter, but they had, for the most part, receeded into their summer state of instead holding uninviting rock slides. Big Cottonwood Canyon road could also be seen far below to the North.
Given the late time (now 10am) and the likelihood that we'd be forced to walk the ridge back down instead of skiing down, we decided to error on the side of caution and not go any higher. Had it been just a mountaineering trip and we didn't have to get to work by noon, we probably would have continued, but being that we had skis with us, it would be cruel and unusual punishment to finally stand on the summit of Superior with skis in hand and then turn back and walk them back down. Why didn't we leave the skis at our lunch spot and go for the summit bag? The same reason we could not leave the skis in the car at the base. What if the snow were skiable up there?
The affirmative "click" of boot being inserted into bindings at the top of a mountain that I just spent hours climbing is one of the greatest pleasures in ski mountaineering. It is the exact moment when my perspective changes from carefully watching every step and tedious upward progress, to a frame of mind of freedom, confidence, and the larger-than-life reward of dancing with the mountain. Misha and I were both very nervous about the snow pack on the south face we'd ascended, but stole a few fresh powder turns on the north side of the ridge, in "Cardiac Bowl", before stopping anxiously on top of the snow fields we'd avoided on our way up. We agreed that Misha would do a ski cut to test the snow pack. The idea of a snow cut is a skier will make a traverse from one edge of a couloir/snow field to the other while jumping as hard as possible in order to stress the snow. Since he/she is at the top of the snowfield, if an avalanche does start, it will run below them rather than come down on top of them. If it is very steep, this is usually done while a partner belays the one doing the ski cutting with a rope. This was not steep enough to warrant the use of a rope.
To both of our surprise, Misha was not able to start a slide with his ski cuts. I agreed to watch him carefully, lest he start something once he began skiing, and he dropped into fall-line turns on the thirty-five or so degree slope. It was beautiful! He was making confident, round turns in soft, spring snow--and the snow was going nowhere. He pulled to a stop with a yelp of delight and an arm shot into the air. This was my queue. I made a few tentative turns but, inspired by his success and fluid turns, I realized it really was okay to let the skis run--the dance began. The skis could be pushed far out to the side and the new spring snow would return them just as the rules of the dance dictated.
We took turns skiing and watching the other ski (for both safety reasons and inspiration) down to the point we had crossed over from the rocks on our ascent. We did not have a continuous descent route scoped out and thought it would be safest to retrace our steps. This would mean one or two scrambles down rock bands, but would ensure we would not end up on top of any large cliffs. We both wanted, however, to continue down the inviting snowfield. I had a hunch, based on some reconnaissance I'd done on the way up, that we could ski the snow field much longer before having to down climb a small cliff that would connect us with the lower snow field. After some debate, Misha agreed to trust my hunch and we continued our play down the snow. Part of what convinced both of us to continue downwards instead of crossing over, besides those darn sirens again, was the slight chance that there was an escape route to the left (the cliff I thought we'd have to down climb was to our right) that would give us a continuous line the whole way down. We took the risk and were rewarded graciously with a sweeping left turn in the snowfield that continued down into a narrow couloir. Time after time, we would come to what looked like a dead end and there would be a way out--a thin line of snow between rocks, a snow bridge over a runoff stream, or a wide sweep of snow that took us around a rocky corner.
Finally the song ended. Misha and I stood at the edge of the snow with our skis still on, hidden in amongst the willows a mere 100 feet from the pavement. Looking back up the eastern side of the south face of Mt. Superior that we'd just descended, I realized something remarkable. Our tracks were completely hidden from view. From our vantage point, it was impossible to see the strung-together snowfields that had granted us continuous passage from the summit ridge to where we now stood. Only we and the mountain knew our dance had ever taken place.
The south face summit couloir of Mt. Superior sits now even higher on my must-do list, but it may have to wait until next season. We were granted one last ski and some stunning views from the summit ridge that I've longed to see for over three years, but as the snow melts, the rocks are warming up and it is time to dust off a different to-do list.
