With it being the off-season, and what seems to be an on-and-off shoulder season in Jackson where my schedule does not line up with quality weather days to ski big lines, I thought I would take a short, weekend trip to Salt Lake.

We had made plans initially to ski either Twins Peak or Coalpit Headwall. We decided on the latter the night before. Getting a 5am start, we started hiking on dry ground to a creek crossing before reaching the mouth of the Y couloir. The plan would be to take the Y Couloir, hike the ridge up, and drop into Coalpit Headwall.

Booting up the Y we reached the just shy of the summit with higher temperatures than expected. Also, when looking around the corner to Coalpit, we saw the wall was completely socked in leading us to decide to just drop the Y.

In hindsight, I am glad we did. The exit out of Coalpit looked barren and dry. Making for a long walk out nothing short of miserable. The Y on the other hand was a short bushwhack, creek crossing then back to the car for some beers.

Driving down from Wyoming to Utah I could clearly see that snowfall south of Wyoming has not been the same as up north. Slowly, mile-by-mile my expectations of things to come were becoming more and more negative as I got closer to the yellow cloud covered city of Salt Lake and the temperature rose nearly 15 degrees.

The amount of support after writing my side of the story of the avalanche has been incredible and all of us (LJ, RC, and myself) appreciate it greatly. That doesn't even include all of the support we have gotten from my two partners as well. It's a good feeling knowing that there are lots of people who care, and more importantly see the importance of why we all decided to share our stories, to learn. After an incident like that though, then what?

3 laps and 3000' of vertical gained in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Wasatch, Utah. Here's what I got to show for it; hiking, powder, hiking, powder, hiking, and a small slide.


The Backcountry Tour of 2.24 from Steve W. Weiss on Vimeo.

Misadventure (noun): an instance of misfortune; a mishap.

These seem to happen to me a lot when, what John Muir would call "poking around the forest". Whether looking for a climbing area or now, finding pow lines in the backcountry - it happens even more so. Unlike [sport] climbing, backcountry snowboarding you go where you want, where your mind and body believes it can handle the risk. So there are no barriers and not much advice other than, "Don't get caught in an avalanche."

Bluebird and stoked! (Rider: Todd Robertson Photo by: Steve W Weiss)

The city of Salt Lake and the horrible weather pattern known as inversion are synonymous every winter. To the scientific, it is "a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property with altitude." To the people of Salt Lake, it is when there is a low flying cloud that traps pollution creating a giant "piss" colored cloud that lingers over our city making the temperature drop dramatically and lowers our air quality. It sucks and the only place you can really escape it are the mountains.