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We got a little bit of snow during the night. PCMR reported 6″ of new. I worked a little in the morning and got to the hill a little after eleven. I spent most of the day hiking around Jupiter. I skied Pioneer Ridge to Jupiter Access, Pioneer Ridge to West Face, Scott’s Bowl, Pioneer Ridge to Puma Bowl, and a few other runs, finding some surprisingly good snow in a few spots.
It was my best powder day at PCMR this season. Hopefully, we’ll get a little more snow tonight and I’ll be back to do it again tomorrow.
2009-2010 Ski Days: 26
- Crystal: 2
- PCMR: 13
- Solitude: 11
- The Canyons: 0
- TOTAL: 26
I skied PCMR with Sam and Mike Kisow. It took a while to find a parking spot due to Sundance. It wasn’t much more than a just a fun cruiser day. Great weather. Lots of going fast.
We somehow ended the day with VIP tickets to the Chali 2na show at Harry O’s. My second time seeing the “verbal Herman Munster” in the past three months. I’m not sure if he’s a good entertainer or if his voice just makes you pay attention to the show, but I had a great time.
Snowmobiler Injured By Avalanche Dies Sunday
A snowmobiler died Sunday morning from injuries sustained after he was buried for 15 to 20 minutes near Grandview on Friday.
Stace Fleming, 48, was riding with five friends and broke away from three of them to head down an unspoiled side of the mountain, triggering an avalanche that carried him 1,200 feet and buried him about 2 p.m., friends said.
The Wasatch Powderbirds, a touring group for adventurous skiers, were nearby and helped dig the Morgan rider out of the 6-to-8 feet of snow he was buried under and called for help. Fleming was flown to University Hospital in extremely critical condition, Davis County Sheriff Sgt. Jan Daley said at the time.
“People need to heed the avalanche warning because all the safety equipment in the world can’t save you,” Daley said.
Family were able to visit with Fleming and say good-bye before he passed away Sunday morning.
That makes three avalanche fatalities this week. Not the best time to be in the backcountry.
Bobby Brown, Jump #1: Switch Double Misty 1260
Bobby Brown, Jump #2: Switch Double Misty 1440
TJ Schiller, Jump #2: Double Cork 1620
Again, I am the one with the free roundtrip ticket to anywhere Southwest flies.
Snow in the forecast for next week.
2010 – Edit #3 from fatbearfehr on Vimeo.
A 51-year-old man from Cottonwood Heights was killed Wednesday afternoon in an avalanche near Solitude.The man was with two other skiers when the avalanche occurred in the Silver Fork area of Big Cottonwood Canyon just before 2 p.m.
The trio of skiers were in an area called the Meadows. Two of the skiers were caught up in the slide. One of them sustained only minor injuries, but the 51-year-old victim was completely buried by the snow.
The woman in the party called 911, and the other man turned on his beacon and started searching. He found his friend buried beneath about four feet of snow, lying face up.
Ski patrol helped pull the 51-year-old out of the snow, but he had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. He was pronounced dead after crews spent roughly an hour trying to revive him.
The conditions are so dangerous right now, Unified police Lt. Don Hutson says the backcountry isn’t stable.
“I don’t know if any area is really safe at this time. Obviously, when you get the right slope in these conditions, then any area where an avalanche could occur may occur,” Hutson says.
This is the second deadly avalanche in Utah in just the past several days. Over the weekend, a 42-year-old skier was killed when he got caught in an avalanche in the backcountry near Snowbasin Resort, known as Hell’s Canyon.
I woke up and immediately checked the snow reports. Brighton was reporting 26″ of new. Alta and Snowbird also called in snow totals of almost a foot and a half overnight. Solitude was reporting 16″ of new snow. In fact, it was the sixth straight day of at least 8″ of snow at the resort.
Crystal reported no new snow, but plenty of fog and flat light.
We made the most of it and had a pretty good morning of skiing. We skied Powder Bowl, Bear Pits a few times, and a few other favorites before heading in for lunch. After lunch, we skied Northway a few times, and ended the day with a pretty good run down Upper Exterminator.
We left Seattle early Friday morning and made the drive to Crystal Mountain. We got there as the lifts opened, got Kristy into some lessons, and skied a few runs before meeting up with Barker and Allyson.
We cruised around the mountain skiing all the runs I grew up on during middle and high school. We lapped Lucky Shot a few times, making sure to straightline Little Portillo along the way. We then made our way to Green Valley and onto the newer Northway Chair. It was my first time on the new lift.
I’m still a little torn regarding the Northway lift. I used to ski Northback a lot back in the day. We’d traverse to Right Angle Ridge before dropping into Teddy Bear Chutes and taking Buffalo Trail/I-5 back to the base. It was a long run, lots of traversing through ice, dirt, and mud. The new lift eliminates the long traverse back, but it also puts a ton of people in the area that normally wouldn’t go there. On the other hand, it made travel to Brand-X and Morning Glory Bowl, two places I had never hiked to before, a lot easier to access and enjoy. I guess Northway serves as a good comparison for Solitude’s proposed expansion into Silver Fork Canyon. While Silver Fork differs from the old Northback in terms of avalanche control work, the lack of fresh tracks and awfulness of the runout to the lift makes you wonder if expansion is such a good idea.
Either way, we had lunch at the Bullwheel and finished the day with a few runs down Powder Bowl, Bear Pits, Hamburger Hill, and some of the old favorites. Then we started the long process of getting our ski gear, food, drinks, and other stuff from the cars to our Gold Hills cabin via the Gold Hills Chair.
After successfully moving everyone into the cabin and while still in shorts or sweat pants, Byron, Cahoon, and I grabbed a few beers and clicked into our skis for some slightly reckless night skiing. We maintained our one-beer-per-run pace for a handful of runs, making sure to take care of the lifties along the way. It made for a pretty fun night of skiing. By our last run we had a pretty good route planned out, including a couple cornice drops, jumps over bushes, and even some pow turns.
Pretty fun day. I even managed to forget momentarily that it was dumping in Utah.
Avalanche Danger Widespread In the West; Inbounds Slide Kills Skier At Sun Valley (via OntheSnow.com)
The Sawtooth National Forest Avalanche Center, which conducted a site investigation following the incident, reported that the avalanche most likely triggered on a rollover of 40-to-45 degrees about 100 vertical feet above the skier. It broke 2-to-3 feet deep and covered a swath 40-50 feet wide. The report said that the avalanche carried the victim into a dense stand of small trees, burying him 5-to-6 feet deep.