On Monday with the high pressure about to end we went to Lone Peak. We started at the Alpine trailhead at 5,500' with the objective to gain the summit ridge between Lone Peak and Big Horn Peak via the main S-face.
A taste of things to come.
We had started a bit late and consequently got cooked on the way up. We did at least have a nice view of Box Elder...
...and Timpanogos - including the Forked Tongue and Cold Fusion Couloirs.
As we were running late and the snow quality looked variable, we decided against summiting and instead accessed the steep East face directly from the summit ridge at 10,500'. After the usual Sastrugi ramp and wind board, skiing down into upper Bells Canyon, there was a partially supportable crust.
We traversed NW across the bowl. Our entrance was on the top right here.
We booted 700' up a couloir to access the N ridge and Big Willow Cirque.
There was an interesting looking slot from here that required a rope assisted down-climb.
The couloir skied quite nicely along with the apron below.
Big Willow Cirque with the couloir being the obvious slot in the middle.
After another boot, we skied a nice N-facing pitch into Rocky Mouth Canyon, finding some...powder!
Traversing round, we then entered the Crows Feet, skiing down on top of Sandy.
1,500' ft down or so the fun started. A combination of minimal low-elevation snowfall and minimal mid-elevation avalanches had left the exit gullies quite bare so we had to bushwhack out for a couple of hours.
All in all, a quite memorable adventure in the Wasatch - windboard, sastrugi, powder, almost-corn, hike, skin, boot, rap, couloir, heinous twilight bushwhack, and of course Hamangogs.