At about 8:30 Monday night, my good friend and frequent adventure-partner, Shawn, called from the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon--he just recently took a part-time gig at the Alta Deep Powder House tuning skis, though his full-time job is as the head mechanic at Contender, one of the city's best bike shops. "There's already like, about a foot of new snow up here," he told me. I'd been checking the NOAA weather forecast--for Tuesday--all that day from work, and, according to their models, we were only supposed to receive 4 to 6" overnight...
The next morning, our friend Andrea picked us up at 7 am. According to the early-morning Utah Avalanche Center report, up to 16" of 8% had been deposited overnight, the majority of which ended up in upper Little Cottonwood. As it turned out, UDOT was doing control work on the LCC road 'til 9:30, so despite our ambitions to take advantage of an earlier start, we were forced--instead--to sit still in traffic near the mouth, arriving at the trailhead just after 10, the second car in the lot.
Here's Coby after topping out above Scotty's Bowl--the view looking due west, with the Pfiefferhorn at far left.
Nearly there! Here's looking NW toward the Salt Lake valley and the Oquirrh range, with the Salt Lake Twins to Coby's right.
After skiing a shot down a feature we've christened, "the Tube," we decided to take a short detour on our way to the Tri-Chutes to ski the apron of the Birthday Chutes. Here's the view to the NW from nearly the top, which had to be avoided that day due to high winds.
That's Coby linking turns on lap 2, getting the hang of it. Far right in this frame are my tracks--I caught a tip and nearly ate it, but managed to avoid wallowing in the deep snow.
Coby and Andrea climb the skin-track, with the entire place to ourselves. The Pink Pine ridge is visible in the upper left, with the huge Tanner's slide path in half-light, half-shade on the opposite side of the canyon.
Here's what we came for--deep, untracked powder in the Tri-Chutes. All the day's trail-breaking has been well worth the effort!
Nearly to the top of the apron section--had more stable conditions permitted, there's still something like a thousand vertical feet of skiing above us!
Coby lays down perfect fall-line tracks down the middle chute while Andrea and I squeeze in one more lap before skiing out to the trailhead!
A successful mission to the Tri-Chutes; Coby stands below the proud carnage!
Coby skis out the mid-section of White Pine, with Red Top and the Tri-Chutes area in the sun.
The light that afternoon was stunning--here's the north wall of Little Cottonwood, on the out-run. Ten more minutes 'til Beer-thirty!
That evening, as we drove back down to the valley, I noticed that no one had yet skied the Y Couloir, a steep, due north-facing, 3,200 vertical foot chute. I immediately thought, "Dawn Patrol," and tried several times--in vain--that night to convince my best friend and ski partner, Tyler, to wake up at 4 am and boot up the monster by headlamp... I was on the schedule to open the shop at 10, and so in order to pull it off, we'd have to get motivated! Tyler, however, was not psyched, and so I slept in, then went to work. The Y would have to wait 'til Thursday.
Thursday, 6:30 am--despite rallying, as we slowed down around the bend--just before the pull-out for the Y--we all instantly notice that there are at least three tiny points of light--headlamps--visible high in the couloir, and as we approach the plowed shoulder, that there are at least five vehicles already parked there--too many suitors! The problem with the Y is that if anything happens above you as you ascend it--like, for instance, an avalanche--then you and your partner are like sitting ducks: the chute is simply too narrow, the granite walls that the line both sides too steep, and so the unlucky are likely to get flushed all the way to the bottom. Prudently, we opted--instead--to go check out something else; it's really no fun dealing with fried nerves all day.
After about five minutes of deliberation in the White Pine lot, we agreed to go have a look at the Coal Pit Headwall, one of the classic mountain ski-tours of all the Wasatch. Tyler and I had skied it a few weeks earlier in good conditions, but our late start on that day saw us boot nearly all the way up another spectacular line, the Hypodermic Needle, only to pass it over in the interest of the time--I had been second guessing our decision to skip it everyday since, and so I was keen to link them both. As we departed the White Pine trailhead, two of the hardest skiers in the Wasatch passed us like we were standing still--they were so fast, in fact, that they very nearly lapped us up the Needle, but were good enough to lay down a beautiful skinner--not too steep, yet still efficient. There's something to be said about being second.
On our way to ski our first run, I first had to make a brief pit-stop at the gear cache to retrieve my crampons, a tool and a rope for the Coal Pit rappel. The cache is hidden in upper Maybird cirque, at the foot of the 11, 326 ft. Pfeifferhorn--in my opinion, the crown jewel of the range.
This is the scenery from the top of our first run down, a line known to long-time Wasatch locals as the Hogum 200, the western shot off of the Maybird-Hogum divide. Far to the right one can see the shaded profiles of Montgomery and the Sliver, the two other chutes of the Thunder Ridge Triple Crown.
The obvious line in the center of the photo is the Hypodermic Needle; if you look very closely, you'll notice at least one very small, shadowed figure--Hardman #1, I think--putting in the skin-track and just about to enter into the chute-proper, near the base of a large rock buttress, just to the right of the tree in the foreground. The north summit of Thunder Mountain is the also the start of the Coal Pit Headwall, the shaded, angled terrain to the right of the Needle.
Here's a really foreshortened view looking up the Hypodermic; it's obscured by the shaded area visible near the top of the tree on the left.
Looking back toward the Hogum 200 and our tracks from earlier that morning...
Andrea on the skin-track, just above the large cliff band.
There's the Pfiefferhorn again, this time, viewed from the northwest. The prominent white ramp is the NW Couloir, another Wasatch MEGA-classic!
Andrea putting in the boot-track, just below the top of the Needle.
A view down the chute "to end all chutes," according to Andrew McLean's guide, the Chuting Gallery. 1,100 feet of fifty degree bliss, followed by a enormous apron.
This photo does the line no justice, as it's extremely foreshortened.
Tyler styling the last bit of the upper chute; the snow was not the lightest I've skied, but soft enough for a nice, long thigh-searing kick-turn run.
The aftermath, with Tyler skinning up and out toward the top of the Coal Pit Headwall.
Tyler and Andrea traverse to the ridge separating the Coal Pit gulch from the main Hogum's drainage.
The Coal Pit--it's nearly 5k vertical feet to the LCC road. This classic outing has a bit of everything: a long approach, a steep, rock-lined chute off the headwall, then a series of wide open, gladed powder skiing to a final corkscrew tube.
The moon, high above the Coal Pit buttress.
Our tracks--as well as those of the two hardmen--off of the severely foreshortened headwall.
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