Wow so I’ve been way behind on posting photos. I was moving photos from my camera card to Lightroom and realized I’m quite a few months back. As such the next batch of posts over the coming days will be short.
While the snow year turned out just OK this year, even an OK year here still has plenty of spring skiing to be had, although the timing can be difficult. A couple years ago I skied the East Twin Couloir on Deseret Peak with Kasi and Andreas. That year we had an all-time record snow year across much of Utah. We tried to ride our motorcycles up the gated road but got stuck walking quite a long way.
This year the snow year wasn’t as big and almost to the day I went back with Branden, Kate and a couple of their friends. We drove in to the second gate this time and bicycled from there to nearly the end of the road before swapping the bikes for skis.
This time we got a much earlier start and were able to get to the Twins when they were in full sun. Unfortunately we could see a fair number of people at the top who’d arrived before us and they were still waiting for the snow to soften up. We were able to ascend the entire east couloir before anything began to soften. Rather than just waiting around, we kept going from the saddle and bagged the summit of Deseret and then skied down the ridge to the south facing side of the saddle. Fantastic corn turns all the way.
A sunny and hot ascent back up to the saddle showed us we were the remaining party on the mountain. Unfortunately the temperatures plus the sun never really softened things up in either couloir. A bone jarring ski down—just like last time—gave way to more forgiving terrain below—unlike last time where it was freezing up the whole way back to the bikes.
Perhaps I’ll give this one more try in the future with Carly and we will be able to time it better for some good snow in one of the couloirs.
