Despite the major crowds this weekend, fresh snow could still be found all over Little Cottonwood Canyon. Here are some photos from Tiger Tail that I took with my friend Kris who was nursing a bad shoulder injury (hence the no-poleing it).

Kudos to him for his efforts to not miss the pow.

Kris, not letting his shoulder injury keep him down

Kris doing his best not to swing his arms like a madman

Trip update from Telluride FWT stop later this week with a picture of BH team rider, John Campell!

Jake

Our plan today was to catch the bus up Big Cottonwood Canyon, get off at Spruces, climb Reynolds, ski the north side of Reynolds, climb up to Millcreek ridge, head towards Gobblers, and then exit Neffs. We placed a car at Neffs and generally followed our plan. Here's Sam skiing off Reynolds.



Here's Bart skiing off Reynolds.



Here's Alex "skiing" off Reynolds.



And then we headed up to the Millcreek Ridge towards Gobblers.



We had the discipline to pass by the Wilson Chutes. When we got to Gobbler's shoulder however, we looked into Alexander Basin and followed our hearts. It was, after all, Valentines Day. It was deep. Here's a series of shots of Sam doing his freeheel thing.



On Districts:



Which way is up?



And here's Alex "skiing" his Basin and pulling Gs only a boarder can pull:



I jinxed us when we got to the bottom, saying, "That run was so good, we're going to pay for it." As we made our way out of Alex's Basin, we immediately began paying our debt as we headed up a steep ridge that we affectionately named "Cluster Ridge." For the record, we officially claim the first ascent of Cluster Ridge. We are certain no one has ever ascended it because it is impossible that there is anyone in the world that dumb. Suffice it to say, it was a time eater.

Cluster Ridge led us to the top of a Gobbler subridge. We did not fully ascend the subridge because as we topped out, we got throttled by blowing snow, blowing snow and more blowing snow. We de-skinned and descended what would otherwise have been an epic run off the Northeast face of Gobblers. Sorry, no pictures of this run exist. You can imagine it though by looking at a blank white piece of paper.

When we got to Porter via a tight terrain trap, we had a little pow wow about whether we should try to make Neffs where our car was parked, or simply ski out to the Millcreek Road and hitch hike home. It turns out that we did both.

None of us had ever followed Porter to Neffs and we could only guess where we should go. That combined with the fact that I'm a notorious bad route finder and we were still in blizard conditions didn't help. And if you call a 3 inch slab an avalanche, then we kicked off several. After a 1.5 hr attempt to ascend Cluster Ridge II, we pulled the plug and skiied out Porter.

Lucky for us, we immediately got rides out of Millcreek, and some BD employee dropped us off right at our cars. It was a tough day, somewhat disappointing, but as always, well worth it. Thanks guys.

Stats:

Start: Spruces thanks to a $4.50 bus ride from UTA
Finish: Millcreek
Diversity: nicely balanced -- 1 splitboarder, 1 telemarker, 2 AT'ers on F1s and Dynafits, 2 white guys, 2 Japanese/Chinese guys
Vertical up: 6200 ft
Vertical down: 8500 ft
Miles: unknown
Time: ~ 7 hrs
Visibility: ok to not ok to really not ok
Trailbreaking: top of boots to high thigh
Skin failures: a few
First ascents claimed: Cluster Ridge I, Cluster Ridge II
Number of times I saw Bart on his back: 3
Number of times I saw Sam upside down: 1
Stages of hypothermia experienced: sewing machine legs, feeling of hopelessness and desperation, minor irritability
Highest moment: #1 skiing into Alex's Basin, #2 finding a ride out of Millcreek
Adequate food: no
Food consumed: 1 nutella sandwich, 1 bag cliff blocks, 2 PROBARS (Maple Pecan and Koka Moka)
Mission accomplished: no
Worth it: yes
Understanding Valentines: Karen (me), Rosie (Bart), Sammie (Alex), Recommendations Accepted (Sam)

I got to cruise up to Jackson a few weeks ago with Dan, Courtney and Caitlin for a demo and had a blast since it was my first time there.  We met up with Pete, the BH rep and his friends and had some killer runs on the foot of new snow they got.  As we were driving home the closer we got the harder it snowed and we had a foot and a half in the mountains by the time we got home.  That made for some of the best days I've had all year. Last week I went out to Telluride for the FWT Qualifier and had one of the funnest weeks of my life.  The snow was decent, I couch surfed all week and made a bunch of new friends.  I crashed in Dave Wintzer's hotel room for a few nights and he killed it in the comp.  He ended up qualifying for the rest of the FWT which is awesome!!  Once again, on my way back to SLC it started snowing and it's been snowing ever since.  I'm heading up to the Northwest in a few weeks so hopefully it'll dump again when I get back (and before of course).  I'll be skiing up at Crystal so if anyone wants to take some laps with me let me know.

Last week there wasn't much time in my schedule to round up a partner for a tour so like I so often do I headed out to powstashville, a little spot about 20 minutes from my house.

It's an unique tour in that it involves a river crossing.  Despite the thick river ice I still get nervous each time I cross.

The sun was out and the fresh snow made for challenging trailbreaking but I knew that the descent would be well worth the effort...and it was.

From the top of the ridge I could see the Wasatch in it's entirety but I couldn't see a single track, a person or anything that would compete with me for first tracks so I took my time to take it in. 

I was once again on last year's Districts and they were the right call - surfy and soft flexing in the 14" of new pow. The results were, memorable.

The photo below is about half way down the 1300' slope.  I can't believe I actually stopped mid slope but I knew it would make for a good photo.

Me and the districts spent some quality time together in one of my favorite places in the world last week, location undisclosed at this time.  Only had a couple of hours to ski, so I decided to top out and and hit the northwest ridgeline.  At the top, looking westwardly at an untouched chute extended the trip by another hour.  Sometimes temptation is too great.

A little late on the post, but the pictures from the Jackson Hole Demo Day Apres Party have finally been downloaded and are ready to post.  For all of you that weren't there, January 24, 2009 marked the day in which Bluehouse Skis took Jackson Hole Mountain Resort by storm.  Over the course of two days Jackson Hole receied over 20 inches of snow, providing a perfect Saturday for our Demo Day and Apres Party at the Mangy Moose.  We had a great response, especially for the Mavens and the Shoots.  The locals surfed the Tetons all day with Bluehouse as there boards and kicked backed with a few PBR's listening to DJ's LP Chillen and Thom "Me Tuff Nutz" Ontko at the Moose.  A pair of 187 Districts were raffled off and a bunch of Bluehouse Shwag was tossed to the crowd.

The187's have turned out to be the perfect all around tool for BC skiing in VT. I took them out yesterday looking for a stash that had always been just over the horizon for me. The old crusty types always talked about it in vague terms, but would clam up when pressed for specifics, so rather than waiting to inherit their snow, my friend Greg and I went looking for it ourselves. Let's just say yesterdays little exploration tour was a stunning success, and no I wont tell you where the goods are.....

Getting Ready for the fun part:

We ended up in the middle of nowhere almost 7 miles from where we started and had to hitch hike back.