Trip Report: Alpine Ski Tour next to Alta
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Alpine Ski Tour next to Alta By Katherine Thom |
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| SKI | 12/19/2024 | NTD |
| The sun was shining brightly and it had not reached maximum inversion warmth so the snow quality was very manageable. Frank, Eli and I skinned up the summer road and we would have taken the shortcuts to cut the long corners, but they were steep and not yet well developed. Grooming had only occurred on the road itself. We shortcut up to the third layer of summer road and had some rocks to navigate around, but it was still pretty easy. Unfortunately we were too far south and had to backtrack on the summer road back towards the grizzly gulch approach. Oh well. After a quick snack we got to experience the gnarly skinny section going east around the gulch. There wasn't much room in there for up or down but at least the snow was still nice. Once on the plateau, we followed some groups up and enjoyed warming back up in the sunshine to the final destination, Twin Lakes Pass. After we transitioned we agreed to go very slow and keep an eye on each other. That was the understatement of the day because if you wanted to avoid rocks, the only speed was slow. After regrouping at the mouth of the gulch, we got to see how truly narrow the approach path was. It was an exercise in very controlled side slipping around mogul bushes with some snowplow turns for good measure. Once we were back out in the sunshine on the west-facing slope, it opened up and we had some soft slightly-mushy turns. From there we were sick of dodging rocks, so we took the easy groomed summer road the whole way back. It was a great day out and we look forward to heading out again once more snow arrives. |
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