I have a love/hate relationship with spring. Scratch that. I hate spring. I love mountains, but only with snow on them. Spring takes the snow away. I hate that. As such, I try to eek out as much skiing as possible as the snow melts to prolong the season. But there comes a time when you have to exhale deeply and admit that it’s time to hang up the boards. This day of reckoning happened in the Uinta Mountains, as I trudged through isothermal snowdrifts along ice-free lakes and saw flowers growing in green alpine fields. Yes. Flowers.
Mirror Lake Highway had just opened the weekend before, and when that final gate allows passage to Bald Mountain Pass and all the ski terrain around it, ski season generally gets a month-long extension. But not this year apparently, as much of the snow was already gone and what was left was hardly skiable. The alarming rate of snow melt was illustrated in the Trial Lake Snotel site that showed the snow pack dropping from 27 inches to 6 inches over a 5 day period. So it was with urgency laced with doubt that we pulled up in the Yurt-on-Wheels to the Crystal Lake trail head to climb and ski Mount Watson.
The roads were dry almost to the summer parking area where the popular start to such hikes as Wall Lake and Notch Mountain begin. The skin started out well enough, until it became so patchy in the trees that we decided to tie skis to packs and boot it. But the soft snow piles sank us to our hips, and exposed streams required balancing acts in ski boots. We followed moose tracks all the way to Wall Lake where we could scope out our lines of descent on Mount Watson that loomed over the water. A short skin up and around the lake put us below the peak.
Wet avalanche activity was everywhere, and our original plan to ski the east face was reconsidered. Skirting old slide debris, we traversed to Mount Watson’s north ridge and set a boot pack. Again, isothermal snow sunk us with almost every step and the ascent became a game of finding the thin line of hard snow between patches of trapdoor muck. But with a little more effort than usual (generally required in backcountry spring skiing anyway) we topped out on the summit where a ring of stone provided seats for viewing of the Uinta Mountains spread all around.
After summit beers and photos, we skied and snowboarded back the way we came. As I slashed my first turn, I was elated that the snow held my weight. It wasn’t corn… far too late for that, but it was soft and it didn’t slide. The undulating ridge gave way to the lower east face where we did find some corn snow to carve, but 23 turns in the snow collapsed, sending Adam tip first on his splitboard into the snow. We were wallowing, temps were in the upper 60s and the snow was getting dangerous. This was clearly going to be a one-and-done tour.
Despite the snow quality, we still held onto winter with sweaty, sunburned hands. So we camped near the pass and woke early to check out some lines on Murdock Mountain, a rocky, flat-topped mound across the highway from Bald Mountain with steep skiing on her north face. The best thing about Murdock wasn’t the short and easy access from the roadside, but the fact that there was still a lot of snow left.
With one of many hats displayed on his noggin, Adam led the way skinning to the bare, bouldered summit where again, we had a “Summit Brew” and waited for the colder north face snow to soften. We waited too long. In the eastern-most chute, slushy corn alternated with leg-chattering crusty top-layers which alternated with leg-swallowing holes barely covered in a thin veneer of rotten snow. It was so fun that we went back for seconds.
This time we chose a chute next door with a funky natural halfpipe at the bottom where I voiced what I did not want to hear. I said, “This is probably the last run of the season. Right here.” I scanned the horizon filled with Bald Mountain and the Uinta’s north slope peaks and breathed deep. I savored the moment as I cut my first turn which soon led to my last.
And just like that, the 2012/13 ski season was over… probably. But boy what a season. We skied almost every major mountain range in Utah except for the Abajos and Deep Creeks. We made turns on everything from hateful chunder and sheets of styrofoam ice to the most blessedly divine powder. We slept in huts from the Bear Rivers to the Tushars, ticked off long sought-after descents on Mount Nebo, Deseret Peak and the La Sal Mountains, and, most importantly, spent time with some of the best touring partners and friends in what is absolutely the best place in the world to be a backcountry skier.
Let’s do it again next year…