I had a crazy morning. My alarm went off at 3:30 and I was trying to get out of the house by 3:50, but I accidentally spilled a container of spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen tile. D'oh! It took me 10 minutes to clean it up and I was rushing to get out of the door.
I met Trevor and Matt at the Little Cottonwood Park-n-ride at 4:30. Trevor is an avid backcountry skier with over 130 days in this season. He is a really cool guy and was sporting a tye dye shirt and a Hawaiian swim suit over his ski pants. We met Lana at the Tanners slide area parking lot and geared up. The goal was to climb Tanners Gulch and Sunrise Peak.
Tanners is a steep couloir (chute) that has a reputation of being one of the most avalanche prone areas in the Wasatch, so it doesn't get climbed much until May. The conditions looked to be good and Matt had climbed it 5 days before and it was perfect, so he said snowshoes would not be needed. Lana already had them strapped to her pack, so she decided to leave them on.
We started a few minutes before 5:00 and within 10 minutes we were in the gulch heading up the steep snow. It was really cool seeing the headlamps going up the snow and making their way into the gulch.
After about 30 minutes we ran into a huge problem. The snow had a hard crust, but it was only a few inches deep, and below it was much softer, so we started to break through and post-hole. Matt and I were hoping that the conditions would change the higher we went, while Trevor put his skins on his skis, and Lana put on her snowshoes. They quickly started putting distance between us, as we were totally bogged down in the snow. Every step was a struggle as we sank up to our knees and we both cursed under our breath knowing we should have brought the snowshoes.
We took turns breaking the trail and Lana and Trevor got way ahead. After an hour we had only gone .6 miles and I had to laugh at the thought of what our first mile split would be. Eventually we decided that we were not going to make it to the top of the gulch in time to summit, so Matt wanted to turn back because he had to get to work. We went up for 1:40 before we decided to turn back. We called Lana and she was going to keep going for the top and Trevor had picked a different line to ski as he was sinking to his waist in snow and really struggling.
After a tough start we both had a really good glissade (slide on our butts) for a good portion of the way down. When we were almost to the bottom Trevor came gliding down on his skis. He said the conditions only got worse, so he decided to bail too. We ran into pieces of an animal (we think maybe a beaver) that had been a meal for something probably earlier in the night. There was a stomach, some teeth, a piece of a jaw, some hair and blood and that was it. It looked like coyote tracks in the snow. It was kind of gross.
We made it back to the car in 2:31. Lana went all the way to the top and ran into some really spooky conditions with a lot of sugary snow, so she decided to turn back and I think that was the right move.
It was a fun day, but a little disappointing. The only silver lining is that my legs are still pretty fresh, so I can run in the Grandeur Peak Fun Run tomorrow. I will post s few pics and a video later.
Climbing the gulch
Skiing Tanners | 