Water drops landed on my face and woke me up from a deep sleep filled with dreams of skiing in a rain storm. Confused, I wiped my face and sat up in my sleeping bag to make sure I was still inside the Snorkeling Elk Yurt, located in Utah’s Tushar Mountains. Earlier that night my…
Tag: Skiing
Powder turns on Logan Peak
Utah was blessed with some of the deepest snowfall of the season over the last weekend of February, when Snowbasin got buried in 26 inches in two days. After pigging out on powder Sunday, Adam and I headed north on Monday in search of backcountry turns untouched by the masses on Logan Peak in Dry…
Touring The Three Temptations in American Fork Canyon
The Central Wasatch may be overrun by backcountry skiers at just about every trailhead, but not all is tracked out. American Fork Canyon in Utah County is basically the “backside” of Little Cottonwood Canyon, and is blessedly devoid of skier traffic. We decided to explore this little-skied canyon and chose The Three Temptations as our…
Friday video: One Day at Snowbasin
By now, you’ve all probably recovered from the epic snowfall we had in Utah a few weeks ago, unless you skied at Snowbasin. No other resort got hammered quite as much as Snowbasin, where over three feet of powder dumped on this mountain, and pretty much only this mountain. After the deepest day, GoPro videos…
DPS announces release of elusive Spoon ski
DPS, Salt Lake City’s own boutique ski maker known for high quality carbon skis, is finally releasing their elusive Spoon. We featured the ski way back in February, 2011 with the article, “DPS Spoon 150 with Cleat Technology adds 4th dimension to skis” and in September, 2011 when the company released video of the Spoon…
Black Diamond Factor Mx 130 ski boot review at OR All Mountain Demo
Man am I really impressed with what Black Diamond has been up to these days. For the 2013/14 ski season, they’ve revamped their entire ski lineup, and redesigned the Factor ski boot from the ground up. The Factor Mx 130 is what they’re calling a “true” 130 flex backcountry boot and replaces the Factor we…
Voile Buster skis review at Outdoor Retailer All Mountain Demo
So many skis, so little time. The Outdoor Retailer All Mountain Demo is an orgy of new skis, boots, and other winter gear all in one place – at Solitude Mountain Resort. With so many options, I made sure to ski the planks I most wanted to try, and the Voile Buster skis were at…
The Patroller Z Chronicles: Abundance
Wow, it has been a while since my last post. In the world of a ski patroller, days blend into weeks and weeks into over a month. The storms piled up the snow in December and we finished off with just about 100 inches of the white stuff. During that time I feel that I…
Winter nights at the Bunchgrass Yurt
One of the greatest joys of being a backcountry skier is staying at a yurt or hut high in the mountains. While Utah doesn’t have a fancy hut-to-hut system like Colorado’s 10th Mountain Division huts, what we do have are quaint, small, and cozy yurts that are every bit as capable of getting us to…
Skiing powder in downtown Salt Lake City
Lake effect snow is a wonderful thing. We all know storms tracking across the Great Salt Lake soak up all that warm, salty water and puke it over the Cottonwood Canyons. But sometimes, once in a great while, a strange storm makes all that snow fall in the valley, and the foothills above downtown Salt…