Trip Report: Alpine Ski Tour Big Cottonwood


Alpine Ski Tour Big Cottonwood
By Katherine Thom
SKI 01/25/2025 MOD
On January 18th we had planned to do a nice Mill D ski tour, but the temperatures were not favorable to being 2+ miles from the nearest road with negative teen wind chills forecasted. We thus moved it to the following week. After a little bit of scrambling to find carpool parking and then to find each other at the base of the canyon, we met the rest of the group at Spruces in Big Cottonwood. We got some excellent beta about the conditions from those who were just returning, an advantage to starting late morning, and went through our discussion of the avalanche report for the day while also checking each other's transceivers. We took an easy pace as planned into the Mill D drainage and managed to leave many of the crowds closer to the trailhead. The best path up to Tom's from the Dog Lake trail wasn't super obvious but we got up to the area and then proceeded to skin up mixed snow (hard pack mixed with soft deep) on some tricky sections. A few skis came off but we managed to all make it up to the planned turn-around spot below the ridge. The turns going down were better than expected, and expectations were quite low given the lack of new snow mixed with wind-scoured surfaces. We got everyone back down to the skin track safely and we enjoyed the soft and uncrowded ride back out to the highway. Afterwards we met for food and beverages at Porcupine.

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