Wednesday, May 20, 2009

SunDial Yer Crazy

AS and I woke up in the dark on a beautiful spring day to ski the Mill B drainage in Big Cottonwood. Notes for next year; we started hiking from the Lake Blanche trailhead by headlamp at 4:45am. We walked 1.5 hours on the dirt trail until we hit the snowline. We booted/and skinned the ridge East of Yer Crazy which is a ski shot East of Dromedary Peak. The high altitude lichen was beautiful and vibrant against Utah's blue canvas.

AS approaching the top of the drainage, 10ish at this time and you can see how the snow had already softened up.

Looking back on the Mill B drainage and our route all the way from the road at the crease of the valley floor. Ask AS how he liked booting this section.

Left of photo: Little Cottonwood Canyon. Right of photo: Big Cottonwood Canyon. Background: The Great Salt Lake

This is a panormic I took of LCC, and some of the most famous ski lines in the West. I plan to use this photo as a reference for future adventures.

AS descending after much deserved corn turns. Time of descent noonish. At this point of the day West facing slopes were perfect corn, however, North facing was still too firm.

Our Yer Crazy variation ski route. The previous photo shows AS lovin turns on the upper shoulder in this photo indicated by the upper most red line. The route was alright, although you can see quite a bit of debris from previous days' warming. This debris compromised the quality of a few turns, but what the hell, we are skiing in late May.

Dirt walking back to the car!



Friday, May 15, 2009

Title Bout In The Desert

Sky Mountain Golf Course Hurricane, Utah
Site of a 5 year ongoing golf tournament between Buckshot and The Great Brandino! Buckshot (Orheim) won the last match and therfore holds the golf crown. We will see how this round shakes out!

Brandino vs Buckshot

3rd Green

16th Tee 200 yard par 3

17th Tee Box - Buckshot down by a couple

17th Tee Panoramic- Look closely and you can see waterfall

18th Fairway. . . 11,000 foot Pine Valley Mnts. background. As for the golf, I edged out Buckshot and regained the golf crown. The crown; a gold boxing belt from Vegas! Can't wait to try it on.

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Yurts, Yurts, Yurts

For the third consecutive year we managed our way up to the Big Water Yurt in MillCreek Canyon. We stayed for three nights which gave us plenty of time to drink coffee, practice beacon searches and hilarious jumping attempts compliments of Ryan. Even though Tiana claimed that she was trip leader B or C, you will notice that she is always mapping out the route or heading the skin charge. Good work T! Lovie even made an appearance, on tele skis for the first time. Thanks y'all for another great trip and get ready for next year!!





Little Water peak in background








Atop Soldier Fork Peak