East and West Kessler Couloirs on skinnier and lighter skis

This morning Aaron Kennard and I went up Argenta and skied down East Kessler couloir then skinned and booted back up to the top and skied down the West Kessler couloir which was new for me.  The snow was pretty good in the East Couloir and pretty crappy in the West, but the West was still so much fun. I love exploring new areas and lines.  We have such an amazing playground in our backyard!  It was weird being on different skis but I really liked them.  The 1.5 pounds less per foot made an incredible difference on the uphill and the 10 cm shorter ski was super easy to get around on jump turns in the couloirs.  Hopefully I can sell some old stuff and buy the demo set up.

 Summit views

Two sets of Blizzards

Aaron got a lot of really good pictures of my jump turns today

Aaron making his way down to the couloir

Jump turning through breakable crust

Aaron climbing around the waterfall cliff

Aaron trying to ski as long as possible

Good memories from this view.  One of our standard family Sunday hikes growing up. 

Tanner's Gulch

Nice morning up in Tanner's earlier this week with Aaron Rice and Joey Camps.  We skinned up icy snow to the upper chute then booted up and around lots of debris taking our time while the sun cooked up our corn and softened the debris fields.  Tanners is such an amazing area!

Joey starting off the morning up the lower couloir

 Great views across the canyon the whole time

Lots of debris fields

Hoping the upper couloir doesn't look like this 

Aaron nearing the top of the couloir

Looking in to Broad's at the East Face of Twins that Jason and I skied a couple days earlier

Aaron and me skiing in the upper chute

Joey keeping it interesting hopping off rollers

Let the corn skiing begin! The corn was so nice on the apron that we had to go back up for another lap.

Twins East Face

I got to ski the East Face of the East Twin this morning with Jason Borro, owner of Skimo Co.  I have been getting all my stuff from Skimo Co, the best and only ski mountaineering shop in Salt Lake.  I've been in there enough that eventually we talked about getting out sometime.  Our schedules aligned this morning and it was a great morning.  I knew Jason would be way faster than me because he is able to ski more days a week and I knew he'd probably be using race gear. I also knew he'd probably never want to ski again if I slowed him down too much.  I made an internal commitment to not let him get ahead of me more than a few steps because I knew if he got a lead on me I would get demoralized and have a hard time getting back in the game.  So even though I was dying with the pace he was setting I was able to dig deep and keep up.  We knew it was going to be more about the line than the snow today as we had a solid refreeze last night and still cool temps with wind this morning.  We were also at the peak around 9 am so we skied very firm snow dodging rocks and frozen avy debris.  On the way out we had some good frozen smooth snow skiing and a few crappy breakable crust sections.  Overall it was an awesome morning and happy to have another friend to ski with who is way faster and way better at skiing.

Jason booting up to the peak

The views on this ridge are some of my favorite in the Wasatch

West Twin and the valley 6,000 feet below

Beta shot for the next exit out Deaf Smith after the NW couloir

On top of the world

Looking down the East Face

Jason dropping in

Now that I had seen how to get through the rocks I could enjoy some firm conditions in an amazing setting.

Jason entering the lower chute

A painting in time, what you do to a picture when it's not in focus 

A better perspective of the line from the top of Tanner's a couple days later, everything always looks way more intense from a distance than it really is.  The line we skied is just straight off the top of East Twin through the center chute.

Stairs Gulch

I have been wanting to ski Stairs Gulch before too much of the bottom melted out so I asked some friends if they wanted to do it this weekend.  Aaron Kennard was able to come and brought his friend Jentry.  Since Jentry was on megawatt's he suggested we go ahead and do a lap once we got to Bonkers.  The snow on Bonkers was still good and a lot of fun. We were back up to the summit above Stairs around 10.  I thought I'd be home early but didn't know I was in for the longest descent of my life!  We had great snow up high and then hit something called the icefall - a 60 degree ice chute - that apparently some people just ski down and quickly stop at the bottom.  The problem was there was a ton of avalanche debris at the bottom of this and really icy above.  Seeing Jentry struggle as he neared the icefall I tried to go down a different chute but the edges of the chute to get to the apron were just faceted snow on top of slippery slabs of rock so I was unable to safely go that way.  I booted back up and found the handline I had seen in pictures and eventually made my way over to that.  Jentry was down below the small cliff bands and said it looked like the rope didn't go long enough.  I figured it would because I had seen a picture of it being used but couldn't remember the direction they had gone with the rope. Rather than test it I booted back up around to the original route Jentry took that now seemed like the best option and down climbed a tree/evergreen bush type thing that I was very grateful for.  Basically this one section took us 45 minutes or more.  Lower down the couloir there were soccer sized avalanche debris that proved unskiable so we walked over that and finally had some great corn skiing down below.  Since I was now late rather than early Aaron and I ran down the trail once the snow ended to drive up to his car at Broads where we started.  It's always fun watching peoples' faces when you come back to a road with skis on your back and whippets in hand when other people are going on summer hikes and wondering where the heck you just came from.

Bonkers (all the good pictures of me are from Aaron's dslr)

The view at the top of Stairs

  

Looking back at the Twins and the NW couloir.  It looked a lot more intimidating to me yesterday and I had to remind myself I had already skied it.

More views on top

Aaron dropping in

The snow in the upper section was great

Jentry really enjoying his heavy Megawatt skis now

Aaron with the valley in the background

The 45 minute section with tree bush down climb

Happy to be past that section

Walking down the very large avy debris

Final corn skiing section

Aaron crossing a narrow rock bridge trying not to fall in the hole on the side

Looking back