November 9, 2000
Shrouded Guidance
©Aaron Lefohn 2000
I am not a morning person. In fact, I have often wished the world could exist without the horrible experience of waking up everyday. I am transformed, however, into an entirely different being when the alarm buzzes for a ski morning. With two feet of snow predicted overnight, the being that jumped from bed this morning without hitting snooze was indeed a very different person from the one who is usually incapable of speech for at least the first thirty minutes of consciousness.I arrived at Justin's house at 5:25 am--exactly when I said I'd be there. We drove through the gently falling snow and unplowed streets to the University stadium parking lot to meet Fred and Greg. The lot was empty, however, as we pulled in at 5:35 am--five minutes later than we said we'd be there. The agreement was that if they weren't there at 5:30 am it meant they were too stricken with should-be-at-work guilt and were not coming. Without coming to a stop, we continued on our way up towards Alta. The plan was to get one last backcountry morning at Alta before the lifts open the following day.
The reason for being up so early was two-fold. Little Cottonwood Canyon often closes for avalanche patrol by 6:00 - 7:00 am during a storm and we wanted to get up the canyon before it closed. Justin also had to be in class by 10:45 am and we also wanted to prove to ourselves and others that we could in fact ski in the morning and get to work by a reasonable time.
By the time we were accelerating down the entrance ramp onto I-215, the snow was coming down hard enough to "kaleidoscope" in the partially ice-covered headlight beams. With the Subaru already in 4WD, we dodged road spray from the trucks for the six miles to the ski areas exit. The end of the plowed road that marked the beginning of the Little Cottonwood Road beheld exactly the site for which we'd hoped--the closure gates resting vertically, beckoning us upward.
At 6:15 am, we dropped down off of the road into the Peruvian Lodge parking lot, just down-canyon from Alta to use the rest rooms. Justin and I paused on our way back to the car to look at some aerial photos of the canyons that were displayed within the lodge. Looking for other photos of the area, my eyes were caught by a yellow piece of paper hanging on the wall that neither of us had seen earlier. The sign read, "Warning!! Alta will be closed to all uphill traffic on Thursday, November 9th for avalanche control. Trespassers will be 'shot'!"
We'd figured this would be a possibility but we'd seen no other warnings about the upcoming blasting--we were simply too early to be warned out on the slopes. Thankful for our informative bathroom stop, we jumped back into the Subaru and blasted through the six to eight inches of unplowed snow in the parking lot and back onto the now-plowed road. We drove around the Alta parking lots looking for warning signs that the area was closed for blasting but found nothing. We weren't still considering hiking Alta--we believed the sign--but Gary and Martin were coming up half and hour behind us and we were worried they wouldn't make the magical bathroom stop to find out the resort was closed.
We decided to park at the upper Alta parking lot and ski East into Grizzly Gulch to find powder that was safely outside the range of the Alta avalanche patrol. Only eight to ten inches of the two feet of new snow that had been predicted had fallen so far and the snow fall had slowed considerably by the time we had our climbing skins on our skis and were ready to leave the car. In order to try to warn Martin and Gary of the impending blasts, we wrote in the ice and snow on my car windows, "Gary, Don't Ski Alta!", "Alta Is Closed!" We figured that with the current rate of snow fall, if they got to our car in the next thirty minutes, the words wouldn't yet be erased.
We followed freshly left, albeit steep, ski tracks out of the parking lot towards the Grizzly Gulch access road. Not only had we stumbled across the closure information, but we were now blessed to be following fresh skin tracks towards exactly where we wanted to go. Letting someone else break trail in eight to ten inches of new snow is nearly always desirable.
Just before reaching the long deserted mining town site of Michigan City, about twenty minutes up from the car, Justin suddenly stopped in front of me and froze. Not more than two hundred feet up the trail was an enormous bull moose standing in the middle of the trail, looking down at us. We discussed what we should do and decided we should treat it like a bear--give it plenty of distance and make sure we didn't spook it. After about five minutes, it sauntered down the hill and off the trail so we resumed our ascent. By the time we passed the location where it had stood, it was about a hundred feet downhill peacefully munching some shrubs and was seemingly uninterested in us.
Our mystery trail breakers were indeed headed exactly where we wanted to go. From Michigan City flats, we followed their track up the avalanche-safe ridge towards the pass that leads to Silver Fork. Justin and I had never been to upper Silver Fork but had heard from several people that it would be a fantastic place to be on a morning such as this, with moderately steep, tree lined bowls that are steep enough to ski in deep powder but trellised enough to discourage sliding of the fluffy snow.
I thought I noticed a blue tint to sky overhead but figured I was imagining it and didn't say anything. It was supposed to snow for the next two days so I assumed it must just be the sunrise. Justin noticed too, however, and asked me if I'd seen it. Within minutes after he noted the bluish sky, the sun broke over Wolverine Peak and our surroundings burst from flat, drab, white to a sparkling diamond snow surface, with millions of "diamonds" falling all around us. We could see the town of Alta 1500 feet below us through the light snow clouds that continued to drop their treasure. Alta had not seen the sun yet, but we were basking in it's temporary glory. Within five minutes, clouds once again shrouded the sun from view and the diamonds returned to the rough.
I always love reaching the top of a ridge I've never been to before. Like a kid running to his gifts on Christmas morning to see what Santa has brought, our pace quickened the closer we got to the ridge line. Our trail breakers had led us to the top of a fantastic sight. We stood directly on top of at least thirty turns of deep, Utah, fluffy powder laid down on top of a thirty to thirty five degree couloir. Spanning to our left and in front of us was an immense bowl of trees and open glades that looked like it had been made specifically for skiing. Had our trail breakers not already tested the snow for us only minutes before we arrived, we would've been very suspect of the avalanche danger. They had, however, done extensive jump testing on the slope and had clearly skied it with no problem.
After removing my skins and putting on my goggles and Goretex shell, I cautiously started down, repeating their jump tests on un-touched snow before committing to the line--it was solid. I straight-lined over some exposed rocks down into thigh deep dream snow, made two parallel turns to test the snow and, realizing how perfect it was, relaxed into deep, knee-drop telemark turns. The turns simply happened after that, rhythmically one after another without conscious effort. I stopped in the trees near the bottom of the couloir and turned to watch Justin. His skis were not quite as cooperative as mine, tending to dive under the snow instead of floating in it, but he too had a fantastic run and pulled off some very nice deep-powder, tele turns.
It was now 8:30 am and we knew we had to get back to the car if we were to make our self-prescribed deadline. We put our skins back on our skis, ate a few bites of food, and began breaking trail back up to the ridge line through steep trees. My skis, which had been so great on the downhill, were proving to be troublesome going up in the deep snow--the tips repeatedly dived under the snow with each step and nothing I could do would keep them at the surface. Justin took over the lead and found that his heal lifts were weighting the tail of his skis enough to keep the tips on the surface. And so it was--I got a "free ride" back to the ridge with Justin breaking trail the entire way.
Just as we topped the ridge again at our previous high point, the first explosive went off at Alta. Being near avalanche bombing is like being in a war zone. The ski patrol uses a combination of dynamite and projectile artillery to initiate avalanches. We were safely across the valley, but it was still important to stay off of avalanche-prone slopes in case the shock wave from the Alta blast reached the slope that we were on. As I mentioned, however, the route we'd ascended was primarily on an avalanche-safe, ridge line.
We got another, unexpected, run of great powder on our way back to the car, albeit not as steep or deep as the first run but almost equally euphoric. We were back at the car by 9:45 am. There, parked at the end of the parking lot, was an Alta police truck in place to ensure that no one entered the Alta ski area while the avalanche control was taking place. There was no patrol car there when we left the car at 7:00 am. Oddly, there was still no sign of Martin's car in the parking lot. Just before we got into the car to leave, two guys appeared at the truck next to us--our mysterious trail breakers. We thanked them profusely for all the hard work and departed the Alta parking lot at 10:00 am.
We arrived at work in Salt Lake, under a light snowfall, at 10:35 am--ten minutes before Justin's first class of the day. I came into the office to find the three Russians, Misha, Alex, and Alex talking about whether they would skip work tomorrow morning to be present for the opening day at Alta. Strangely enough, however, Gary was not yet in. They noted that I had made it to work before several other co-workers but had already been skiing.
As I was writing this story in my office, Misha came in to tell me that Gary had finally arrived at work. Gary and Martin had been in a car accident this morning on the way to Alta and while they are both unhurt, Martin's car is totaled. It is horrible that Martin's car is gone, but what if they had made it to Alta this morning before the police car staked out the parking lot, had not seen the warning note on my car, and had been skiing in Alta when the first avalanche-inducing bomb went off?
The world outside my office window is a white one today and it continues to snow lightly.
