This year, a friend psyched on racing brought up the prospect of skiing the Grand Traverse race, a 40 mile 7k vert gain race from Crested Butte to Aspen through the Colorado backcountry. Combine this with a goal of sking Mt Rainier in a day that i have had kicking around in the back of my mind for a while, and i had at least one solid goal to train for this winter! Unfortunately, winter has not come as it usually does for utah. January into February was solid blocking high pressure with almost no snow. Luckily, we had a bit of a base from early season snow and with little avalanche hazard, i decided some good training days would include some "super tours" throughout the wasatch and elsewhere to train for the race.
Little Cottonwood "Super Tour" White pine to Bells Canyon
The term super tour came about in the Kellner and Hanscom Wasatch Tours guidebook series when they describe the idea of going from the whitepine lot to an exit out bells canyon. This is a tour that i have wanted to do for a while but things never quite lined up. In this case thiugh, with cool temps and sunny skies, Lindsay dropped me off at white pine and i set off at 9am, not exactly an alpine start but seeing as i was training for a long race, i was hoping to move relatively quickly.
Having traveled the area through redpine many times, this section went quickly. My route took me up and over the top of red pine onto a ridge commonly used to ascend the Pfeif in winter... Needless to say on this beautiful sunny day there were quite a few people out doing some questionable things. Rather than go up and over the pfeif i opted to ski down a ways into dry canyon (alpine) and ascend back up to navigate around the pfeif. The skiing here was marginal, mostly a breakable crust, but went quickly with stellar views of Box Elder and Timp. The real gem of this oute came next, the ascent of Chipman peak and descent to lake hardy. I cant really think of a less traveled region in the Central wasatch. it goes without saying that i was the only one around, but the terrain was a really fun and interesting set of chutes and small blocky cliffs which made for great and interesting skiing. From here, i ascended on to South Thunder, admiring all of the skiing potential in upper Bells canyon. From south thunder, i traversed the ridge a short ways towards North thunder and dropped into thunder bowl. This was admittedly a bit spicier than i had hoped with some ridge scrambling and a fair bit of down climbing. The views into upper Hogum were breathtaking and a bit nerve inducing with the large cliffs i was bypassing. Thunderbowl went quickly but the whole thing was really overshadowed by the hateful ski out Bells. It was a strange mix of powder, hot pow (that instantly froze to ski bases) and crust, much steeper than expected and much more bushy. Finally, at 7500 with several thousand feet still to drop i gave up on trying to ski and made my way to the trail to walk out. All told i was done before sundown and, happy with my performance, was hopeful for what the grand traverse would bring.
Alta to Sundance (almost)
A second major cross-wasatch tour i was dreaming up is a trip from alta to provo (in the end, i called it and went to AF just to cut down on the driving). I have had an idea of trying to follow the crest of the Wasatch some day as far as i can, connecting Nebo down south to the Bear River Range up north. I guess this is a bit of a ski version of that. This route started with me taking te first bus up from our house to alta. Unfortunately, the first thing that happened was my toe lock lever snapped, but i had just enough left to retain function.
I set off up the ridge of Patsy Marley, a tour i have done maybe a hndered times already over the years. In short order i was on Rocky Point, crossing the divide into the far upper reaches of American Fork Canyon. The region from Rocky Point back to Mill Canyon peak is a section i have not yet skied, and depsite its proximity to resorts seemed to be fairly untraveled, but beautiful land with excellent skiing interspersed with moments of utter rage, as i couldn't lock my toes out due to my broken lever and my ski would pop off every other step while cutting an uptrack. It is clear that this section sees much less precipitation than other parts of the range. Even on the 10,000+ft Mill canyon peak, the southern aspect snowpack was thin with plants poking through. The north ridge of Mill Canyon peak ended up being a bit more technical than the easy walk up i expected, but the views were amazing and the ski opportunities were enticing dropping off to the east into lonely country.
After descending mill canyon peak, i patched together a network of roads to grind out the miles remaining for me to get to my end point, in this case the AF winter trail head, and managed to finish just as the sun was setting.
I had a few other potential traverses planned but the weather, snowpack, and other priorities did not allow for them. I look forward to traversing the La Sals and other ranges at some point in the future.
The "Grand Traverse"
"The Big Event". After hours of driving from Salt Lake, i met up with Andy in Crested Butte, admiring the epic looking mountains around us that we would move through in a few days. After checking in and going through our gear, we drove another 6 hours over to Aspen for the evening to stage our cars for when we would finish the race. Hard to believe that it takes 6 hours to do the drive, and it might take us only double that time to cover the distance on foot (the winner would beat the drive time, getting to aspen before you reasonably could by car!).
After spending the night in a park and ride lot, we met up with Andy's dad for the drive back. He was kind enough to shuttle us back to Crested Butte where he had booked a hotel room for us to hang out in until the start. Being at Crested Butte on closing day but not skiing was a bit of a weird experience, but finally at about 6 we retired to try and get some rest before our 11:30 walk out to the starting line.
The final miles of the ridge roll quite a bit, our beta was to use thin cut skins to glide a bit more, i guess the front runners skated the whole ridge, including skate skiing up hundreds of vertical feet of hills. Hats off to them for that effort. The proximity of Aspen brighened our spirits and we spent the final few hours in conversation, like i would any other day out on the uptrack, slowly bouncing between other groups who were variously handling the situation like we were, with higher spirits, or deep in the pain cave merely grinding it out till the end. Once atop Aspen mountain, morale reached an all time high, we had made it! Not only that, but we had done so on heavy touring gear that is more downhill oriented, while most of our peers were on ultralight set ups- to our benefit, aspen was having a powder day! We crushed the downhill, easily hitting 45+ mph with our newfound energy, passing maybe 5 or 6 other teams in the process, and sped through the finish line! All said and done, we had done the traverse in a bit over 13 hours, a few hours longer than i had hoped, but we had taken 99th place! We had beaten just over half the other teams out that day! Not bad for our first try with heavy gear, at least i am happy with the performance! Now whether or not we go back to try and beat our time... that remains to be seen, it wont happen this year though, we have other goals in mind.
