It’s time to start thinking about avalanches again. You can read Bruce Tremper’s book, Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain, practice with your beacon wherever you can find snow, and take a level 1 avalanche course. Even if you do all of these things every year, it never hurts to take a refresher course, and Snowbird, alomng with…
Tag: backcountry
3rd Annual Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop at The Depot
It’s the time of year to start thinking about avalanches again, especially if you spend any time in the backcountry. To help educate the skiing/snowboarding/sledding/snowshoeing public, the Utah Avalanche Center holds a workshop every first Saturday in November. Dubbed, the Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop, the event strives to bring avalanche awareness to the masses…
October at Alta – a powder skiing photo essay
Winter has arrived in Utah, and it slammed the Wasatch Mountain full bore. Over the course of three days, a late October storm dumped around 45 inches of snow at Alta. Of course the expected result is a mad rush of backcountry skiers in Little Cottonwood Canyon to make early season turns on blissfully deep…
Utah Avalanche Center’s 2010 Fall Fundraising Party at Black Diamond
You can almost smell winter in the air when Utah Avalanche Center Fundraisers are on the horizon. In fact, the big party at the Black Diamond Store in Salt Lake City is on September 16th, and tickets are on sale right now. Like every year, the Utah Avalanche Center depends on backcountry users to help…
Powderwhore releases “TeleVision” trailer
A sure sign that ski season fast approaches is when ski-movie trailers start coming out to tease us with rapid-fire images of deep powder, cliff jumps and winter debauchery set to a rocking soundtrack. Like clockwork, Utah’s own Powderwhore Productions just released the preview of their 6th movie, “TeleVision.” Like all ski films, the movie…
Eat yellow snow to benefit Wasatch Backcountry Rescue avalanche dogs
It’s so hot in Utah right now that skiing isn’t even close to being conceivable. But colder weather is on the minds of skiers and snowboarders, and winter will be here before we know it. Ski Utah knows this future to be true, and will start celebrating the upcoming snowfall with a 100 day countdown to ski…
Forest Service denies Solitude’s Silver Fork expansion
The U.S. Forest Service has denied Solitude Mountain Resort’s proposal to expand the ski area boundary on 182 acres in Silver Fork Canyon. According to the Forest Service, the proposal “didn’t comply with federal regulations governing recreation special uses”, and that allowing expansion into “adjacent, highly valued undeveloped areas is not consistent with the 2003…
Skiing the Pfeifferhorn on the classic Northwest Couloir
The Pfeifferhorn’s Northwest Couloir is a classic ski descent in Utah’s Wasatch Range. The line is located on one of the most iconic mountains in northern Utah and begins right from the top of the peak where it falls into a 50-degree chute that constricts to a 50-foot ice cliff that must be rappelled before…
Ski the backcountry in Silver Fork Canyon
This time of year, it’s strange to be writing about backcountry skiing, but the Wasatch Mountains look more like February than May at the moment. There’s still a lot of snow and backcountry skiing to be had, and Silver Fork Canyon, located next to Solitude Mountain Resort in Big Cottonwood Canyon, is always a good…
Late spring skiing in Wolverine Bowl
Wolverine Bowl above Brighton is an upper elevation area where skiers are forced to go in late spring in search of corn snow. This time of year it may seem foolish to drive up the canyon wearing ski pants and jackets while rock climbers and road bikers recreate in the lower parts of Big Cottonwood….