It is huge. It can be seen from Big Cottonwood Canyon road. Its very presence makes every skier driving to Solitude or Brighton look up and imagine skiing that line. It’s called God’s Lawnmower, and this enormous slide path on the north face of Kessler Peak is an icon of backcountrry skiing in the Wasatch.
God’s Lawnmower is the perfect name for this backcountry tour. The entire slide path looks like God himself fired up a John Deere tractor mower and plowed up the mountainside, leaving a swath of open snow between the pines. Of course nature made this wide ski run using avalanches instead of chainsaws, and evidence of incomprehensible slides is clear when you get close to God’s Lawnmower, where tiny trees struggle to reclaim the mountain’s flank.
Because of the disastrous avalanche potential on God’s Lawnmower, UDOT frequently conducts control work here after big snow storms in order to protect the road. This control work may lessen the chance of an unsurvivable slide ripping out on backcountry skiers, but God’s Lawnmower is still a very dangerous place where avalanches occur all the time. Cliff bands above the slide path, steep slopes, open areas with no anchors, terrain-trap gullies, and many avalanche inducing rollovers conspire to bury ill-prepared skiers. Only ski God’s Lawnmower when the snowpack is stable and even then, approach the run with serious caution.
But if the avalanche danger is low and the snow is good, then God’s Lawnmower is a classic descent. You can make sweeping turns through the slide path, jump off small cliffs, and playfully ski on snow shoulders and through natural halfpipes. The top of the run begins with steep turns that eventually lessen into lower-angle terrain. At the bottom of the steep stuff, an almost flat section holds surprisingly good skiing when the snow is soft and fast. Then the slope gets steep again as it enters a grove of aspen trees that descends all the way to the road.
To ski God’s Lawnmower, park at the Cardiff Fork lot near the sledding hills in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Skin up the Cardiff Fork road for a bit until it reaches a fork. The left fork goes to the ever popular Donut Falls. To get to Kessler Peak and God’s Lawnmower, stay right. After skinning up the west side of the Cardiff Fork drainage, look for a skin track that steeply goes up into an aspen forest covering the ridge between Cardiff Fork and the God’s Lawnmower slide path. Follow the track that snakes up the north side of Kessler Peak until it becomes too steep for climbing skins. You can either boot pack to the top, or just drop into God’s Lawnmower at this point.
After skiing the slide path, stop in the flats and skin back up and over the ridge you used to ascend in order to ski back down to Cardiff Fork and the parking lot. If you choose, you can also continue down God’s Lawnmower into the steep aspen trees that provide even more vertical down to Big Cottonwood Creek. Located up creek is a water pipe that allows access to the road where you can hitch a ride back to your car.
As always, bring a beacon, probe, shovel and a buddy when venturing into the backcountry, and go with a knowledge of avalanche safety. God’s Lawnmower is seriously dangerous avalanche terrain and is deadly during unstable snowpack conditions. Check the Utah Avalanche Center’s daily report before heading out.
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