There had been 12" of light density snow on Thursday along with some winds on Friday. Our plan on Saturday was to head into Cardiff and try to be done by the time the winds picked up mid afternoon.
Early morning light on the Twins.
And the Twins a few minutes later...
Ready to go from Alta : it was cold!
We ascended to Cardiff Pass and then traversed across the ridge towards Superior. We dropped in to Cardiff via Thermos - so named after a misplaced flask from the previous season, though we almost had to rename the line as 'Pole'. The winds were already picking up though there was little to manage other than a few sluffs.
Off the ridge, the skiing was quite nice, though there wasn't as much powder as I was expecting.
One of the many small surface sluffs that we had to deal with.
Since the wind was transporting a significant amount of snow, we lapped the trees that rise Westwards from the bottom of Toledo. We had a plan to exit via BCC, skiing Georges on the way, but when we stopped for lunch, the winds were really nuking so we thought it best to get out and head back to Alta before it got any slabbier. From the ridge, we skied S to the base of the Keyhole.
We skinned up the Keyhole to the pass before skiing back down Pole Line to Alta. The snow seemed better on the LCC side. Unfortunately in the single digit temperatures killed my camera batteries so I didn't get any good shots.
The winds continued to pick up during the afternoon. By 2:30pm all the lifts at Alta were closed, and by 5pm there were 90mph+ gusts on Baldy. Tomorrow promises to be quite interesting!