After a couple of weeks on the bike, it was back to Utah for one last time. The snow had continued to fall and with the low temperatures the Powder frenzy continued. Having not yet skied in Mineral this year, I was fairly determined to make my way over there, putting in a lap on Cardiac Ridge too (hadn't skied there either!). I knew that I needed an early start on Saturday as a) the temperatures were expected to soar, and b) the Heli would be running the same route.
Things did not start well. My flight was hideously delayed. I didn't get to bed until 4am. Getting to Alta at 7:15am was a bit of an effort, but it did look like the day would be quite nice.
Ascending to the pass, I managed to create a new record of zero-to-10 in 10hrs. Needless to say, I was not moving particularly well! Thankfully despite the intense sun, there was a reasonably cool breeze blowing. With the heli buzzing all-around, I almost managed to get to LSB ahead of the beaters. Alas one group just beat me, and I had to suffer them falling and whooping their way down a tasty looking LSB.
From the flats, I did at least manage to observe that one of them appeared to be able to ski.
I was now faced with a choice: Cardiac Ridge or Cardiac Bowl. With some quite tricky trail-breaking I made my way up to the Moraine. The heli traffic was mainly going to Superior, so I traversed hard right towards Cardiac Ridge. Unfortunately I was beaten to it again, but at least on the ridge there was plenty of room.
From the top of the ridge, Upper Mill B was looking good.
Our route off the East Face of the Twins, last month.
Cardiac Ridge, looking N
Mineral - bring it on!
Despite the sun being on it for a couple of hours, Cardiac Ridge was quite good, with the breeze managing to keep anything from becoming too gloopy.
From the base of CR, I ascended to the top of the Moraine, running to AC on his way down. The skiing was good again, but the E facing was starting to get a little heavy.
The combination of no sleep, altitude, and the heavy trailbreaking was now starting to take its toll. I slowly slogged it up to Superior through a heavily tracked Cardiac Bowl. Off the top, entering one of the chutes I ran into AC again, on his way to the summit.
He was game on for Mineral. We put a quick lap in now-heli-hammered Cardiac Bowl.
There was just enough room for a clean line.
From Cardiac Pass, we crossed the upper part of Mill B towards Mineral.
There were some nice lines over in upper Mill B, west of Monte Cristo.
The entrance to the Room of Doom is via a little slot. It isn't usually that good since people tend to side slip. Still we were expecting some good skiing below in upper Mineral.
How wrong we were: the heli had completely trashed it!
We traversed far right to try and find a clean line.
The skiing was quite good, the enormous number of tracks were not. The beater tracks went all the way down to the lowest pick-up point. At least the exit was in fine condition.
A bit of an odd day: nice snow which just avoided getting too trashed by the sun - assuming, that was, that you stayed high N. It would have been even better if the heli hadn't been there! 7,000' ft logged, taking me over the 200k mark. Not bad on 2hrs sleep.