Barons of Backcountry

Andrew climbing up from Little Cottonwood Canyon

      The backcountry skiers were already packing up their cars by the time we got to the parking lot, going home from trips they had started in the wee hours. They had taken advantage of the best snow the day would have to offer. 

As for Andrew and I, we would need to climb fast if we wanted to climb to the top of anything important and get down before the sun went down and the snow froze up.

The 11,000-foot summits towered snowy-white above Little Cottonwood Creek, a skier’s paradise of alabaster ridges and monster-sized bowls, festooned with fearsome outcrops of exposed stone. Further down, the tundra gave way to lodgepole pines that shaded the snow from the late April sun.

What sun! It was hot enough that I started up the trail in a T-shirt with naught but a T-shirt and snowpants. Even so, I was dripping sweat within the first set of switchbacks. I kept taking my ski goggles off and on — off when the goggles fogged up under my exertions and on again when the bright light coming off the snow stabbed my eyes. I had the ski skins and Andrew was going up on snowshoes. We still hadn’t decided which peak that we would climb.

After about two hours of climbing we came out of the trees and had a view of the high peaks, two thousand more feet of snow and rock.

We opted for a peak to the northwest of us and then began a lung-busting climb for the summit. Once again, I found myself doing switchbacks following another route laid by a skier who had gone before. I gained a couple hundred feet on the switchbacks, getting closer to a steep section between canyon walls that were not unlike the canyon gullies we had gone down around Snowbird the other day.

As I climbed, I became aware of two things: the pitch was getting steeper and the snow was getting harder. I found myself using the left edge of my skis more and more in order to cling to the mountain. Up ahead, there was a small flat area beneath a rock face that might have offered a place for me to turn the skis around and start a new line.

But how was I going to get there without flopping over in a big-ass tumble? Round and round and round I’d go and where I’d stop nobody’d know.

I stomped down desperately against the snow crust, struggling for even a feeble purchase. I did not feel secure at all. It occurred to me that the ski boots would have much better purchase if they weren’t attached to the skis beneath them. I reached down, snapped the skis off and stepped into the knee-deep snow. It would be slower going, but now I didn’t have to worry about falling.

Meanwhile, the last traverse had taken me about two football-field lengths from where Andrew was climbing. Getting back to the main route required that I plunge my poles and then the skis into the crust, again and again. Pretty exhausting work. I figured I could just leave the skis and continue on to the summit without them. But Andrew was pretty sure he could get get up the mountain using my skis as poles.

“Are you sure,” I asked, mindful of the fact that if he carried them to the top, I would probably end up sking down the gnarliest part of the mountain.

Andrew clipped them to the pack and started over a boulder pile. I stumbled after in the heavy ski boots, looking for hand holds in the rock or punching my gloves through the crust in order to grip the snow. After a few more boulder wriggles and kick steps, we reached the place where we could go no higher without going down again. In front of us, lay another  — miles of snow, more peaks towering higher yet than the place where we stood.

I was still in my T-shirt, now I reached into my pack for a windbreaker and parka, preparing for the descent.

Andrew took the lead again, and I started with a couple swerves, on the gentle incline near the summit. I stopped at the top of the steep part and began a slow sideways skid on the iciest part of the snow and came to a second halt.

I was sick of fighting gravity. I pointed the skis down and went through a turn without falling. The second one dropped me and I went tumbling (glad I brought  the helmet) and then stopped. It took a couple of falls to make it out of the gully, and then it was just your basic skiing on a big, clear slope.

We reversed an hour of climbing in just a couple of minutes, then got into some tricky crust. Fortunately, the snow was softer by the time we got back into the trees. We pushed through a flat section of woods and then we flew back down through the forest getting down to the trailhead before the sinking sun cooled the warm snow back into ice.

The author standing on a Wasatch summit