So the Weather Channel recently decided to start naming large winter storms, much in the same way tropical storms and hurricanes are awarded an epic-sounding name when they develop off some coastal region. Well, the first of these storms, Winter Storm Brutus, slammed into the Wasatch Front, dropping over three feet of snow (even more in some special locales.)
Of course as skiers in Utah, we couldn’t have been more overjoyed, so obviously, the trek was made to Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons to reap the harvest of an epic snowfall made even more wicked awesome by lake effect snows lining up from the Great Salt Lake.
We here at Utah Outside chose Willow Heights in BCC as our playground due to its lack of steep, north-facing terrain that was highly dangerous due to faceted snow left over on north-facing slopes left over from the storm event of late October.
The morning started out cold, unseasonably so as lake effect snows continued to sprinkle down with brief periods of sunlight peeking through from time to time. We broke trail up the shoulder separating the Willows from USA Bowl, which made our tour slow down a bit, but before long the crew made it to the top of Willow Knob, winded but in good spirits. Thinking the north-facing trees looked tasty, we stepped out to dig a pit when a “whooph” sounded from the snow and a large crack spread out 40 feet in both directions. Clearly the slope was unstable and we continued up to traverse along the Park City ridgeline to ski mellower terrain in Main Willow.
The bottomless snow had turned heavy, and the less-than-steep angle we chose to ski did not allow enough speed to ski through the massive, waist-deep powder. But we did find one area where we got about 10 turns of over-the-head, suffocating waves of blower to smack us in the noggin. Reward enough for the uphill work breaking trail.
It really was simply a nice walk in the mountains where winter seemingly appeared instantly. Back at the bottom, we cracked open beers and toasted the new season, which seems to have plenty of base coverage for the rest of winter. Brutus delivered, and hopefully he has some brothers waiting in the clouds to deliver even more, all season long.