Summer is a sad time of year for skiers. But what we lose in snow, powder turns and cold air, we gain in having a brief window to ski a place we can’t otherwise access. The Uinta Mountains is one such place. The Mirror Lake Highway, the main artery through the Unitas that goes from Kamas, Utah to Evanston, Wyoming, is closed all winter long. The dozens of high mountains that line the highway like stone sentinels are cut off from skiers and snowboarders who don’t own snowmobiles. That means when the highway opens for summer, skiing the Uinta Mountains is on.
In what has become an annual tradition, my buddies and I make the trek to the Uintas from Salt Lake right around Memorial Day Weekend. Road crews try to have the highway opened by then, before the tourist season starts. Last year we skied Mount Watson and Murdock Mountain and found wet spring snow melting at an alarming rate. This year, Mason Diedrich and I drove up to scope out some lines to ski, and found what we were looking for on Bald Mountain and Hayden Peak.
We first parked below the northeast face of Bald Mountain, and chose a line that, although it didn’t go from top to bottom, looked to still give us around 1,000 vertical feet of skiing. We skinned from the highway across sun cupped snow to the base of the line. It quickly became steep, which forced us to take skis off and boot pack directly up.
Near the bottom, the snow was firm enough to provide steps, but as we neared the melted top where snow turned to rock, we started sinking to our hips in wet, unconsolidated mush. Still a few hundred feet below the snowline, we traversed to a massive scree and boulder field, and continued up with skis on our backs.
At the top, we tested snow stability, summer style, by tossing boulders onto the run. I learned that cornice drops are more fun, and that boulders just create potholes in the snow. Satisfied, we clicked into our bindings and made careful turns on corn snow softened like vanilla ice cream left out in the sun.
The aspect was a steep 45 degrees according to my inclinometer, which made turning easy as we allowed gravity to overtake our skis, which pushed around the sloppy surface snow like a butter knife wiping excess mayo off a slice of sourdough. It really was 1,000 vertical feet of creamy goodness that had us giddy at the bottom. With all aprehension gone about Uinta summer skiing, we then drove to the Highline Trail at the county line for round two – Hayden Peak.
From Bald Mountain, we could see a wide swath of snow on the Hayden Peak ridgeline that went from top to bottom below Point 11820. It looked promising from afar, but the west-facing aspect made it too crusty for a morning tour. Having just skied an east-facing slope, it was now time to work the aspects to our favor and ski that line.
From the Highline Trail trailhead, we skinned across a large meadow toward Hayden Peak, then turned south, contouring around a cliff-strewn shoulder that separates Hayden from Mount Agassiz. Just on the other side of that shoulder, with a little over a mile of skinning, we found ourselves at the base of the run. It was filled in, with a few rock gardens, but a moderate angle that allowed us to keep our skis and skins on. With snow made soft by the afternoon sun, we edged our skis in and switchbacked all the way to the divide overlooking Middle Basin on the other side.
From there, a short skin to the top of Point 11820 gave us a massive view of Hayden Peak to the north, Agassiz to the south, and the Murdock, Bald and Reids Peak complex to the west. We could just barely make out our morning ski tracks from this distance. After lunch and a good soaking in of the view, we skied back down the run we came up. While the snow had not been in the sun as long as the Bald Mountain run, I found it to be just the right combination of wet snow and supportive crust beneath – al dente corn at its finest.
Savoring the moment, and the possibility that this would be my final turns of the season, I soaked in every carve and worked the line to its fullest. It was among the most fun run of the year and one hell of a way to end a ski season.
Back at the car, we tailgated with beers and toasted summer skiing in the Uinta Mountains. While the window is short and the treat dissolves with the fading snow, the rarity of skiing these mountains makes them all the sweeter.