On Sunday, with a system moving in, we started early from Snowbird with the objective of climbing Superior via the South Ridge. The route is marked in the picture below. The total climb is about 2800ft with the first 1300ft a mix of skinning and booting
The apron of Superior was a little bony and did not feel or look like good skiiing.
Lars and Tyson went off ahead with the objective of lapping Suicide Chute whilst I booted up it.
The start of the chute is quite low down, so the crampons came out of the backpack at the booting started.
It went on and on and on.
The snow surface was a mixture of windboard and not very supportable facets. I didn't think I was missing very much whilst they skied by.
Skiing down Suicide Chute with Alta in the background.
By the time I got to the top of the chute, the weather was starting to come in.
I was feeling quite good at this point. The booting hadn't taken too much out of me and the elevation wasn't really kicking in. Quite predictable, Lars was keen to get moving up the ridge.
The route to the top was a mix of snow and rock and traversed from one side of the knife-edge ridge to the other.
A few hundred feet above Suicide we roped up and tackled the first crux. I didn't win any prizes for speed or elegance getting over it. I was also starting to get a bit tired.
The view down on to Snowbird was spectacular but I thought better than turn around.
Along came the second crux, and out came the ropes again. This one was a bit more sketchy with some clambering around on a couple of rather exposed rock faces.
Around here I was starting to get really tired and considered bailing. The Couloirs down into main Superior were looking very tasty.
One more crux and we were almost there. By this time I was not moving quickly at all!
The last hundred feet of vertical is along a flatish ridge. You can just boot it with your ski poles. It must have taken me 30 minutes to walk along it. When I finally reached the summit, the weather predictably completely closed in. However, we had to take the obligatory summit shot, a mere 9 hours(!) after starting.
From the summit, we would ski North into Cardiac Chute, the main Cardiac Bowl before descending to BCC via Cardiff. Obviously it looked nothing like this!
Cardiac Chute was a little patchy at the top.
The coverage in Cardiac Bowl was better and there was even a bit of nice powder to ski on. I was so tired by this point that I didn't really care. Skiing down to the BCC road seemed to take an eternity, though I felt a bit better after puking near the bottom of Kessler. I got home at 6pm, went straight to Famous Daves, chewed down a rack of ribs and felt a lot better.