Photos by Eric Cytrynbaum
and Aaron Lefohn.
The "Y". 11am the previous day after our recon. mission
6:30am Stream Crossing
Looking down from the first split in the couloir...our
stopping point after 1 1/2 to 2 hours of hiking because we thought it was
going to be too icy to ski...
Eric at our stopping point. The couloir continues
up and to the right at this point.
Me at stopping point with twin peaks washed out behind
me (looking north).
Eric pinning with authority through the previous
days avalanche mush. It did not freeze the night before so the debris from
the previous afternoon was fresh and sloppy. Where the debris was not,
soft, edgeable ice was left in the slide's path.
Eric sliding through mush.
Me checking out the first icy section...turned out
to be okay but on the way up it was too hard to kick steps into so Eric
ended up cutting steps with his ice axe...but no prob with sharp ski edges.
Me peering down into the crux. The previous day's
recon mission showed exposed boulders below me in the narrow section but
easily passable by hop or by skirt-around. The slide that occurred after
our recon mission, however, had done a lot of damage. What had been snow
the day before was now a running, exposed stream. The only passage was
a small patch of snow on the skier's left side.
One turn at a time towards the rocks...
Me launching a hop turn over one of the boulders
in the crux.
After clearing the crux, we were treated with 400
more feet of roller-ball, mushy, avalanche debris. It was sort of like
trying to ski on a 30 foot deep pile of mushy Hardee's balls :)
Eric in the rollers...
Attacking the rollers with ice axe ready... :)
Pinning through the rollers back to bush-wack forest
and stream.....
...Made it to work by 11am : )
Reporting from SLC....later.
P.S. Fred and I went back two weeks later and made it to within a couple hundred feet of the top of the "Y." A few cliff bands had melted out by then, but were easily cleared with a few hops :) The season was concluded by a June 6 ascent/ski descent of Tanner's Couloir, just up-canyon from the "Y."
