Report from January 17, 2023

Yesterday was a windy, wild, stormy powder day at Alta, Utah.

I showed up around 1:30 pm (after a gnarly 1 hour and 45-minute drive from Park City).

I went straight to High Rustler and had the best Hi Boy run of my life…

Fluffy wind-buff, medium deep powder, top to bottom, full speed.

I kept meeting up with more and more buddies every run until we had a solid mob.

Ron showed us a sneaky, tight tree powder run that was steep and spicy.

We ended up skiing 6 Hi Boys and a buncha other runs.

One highlight was hiking all the way up to Gunsight.

The wind was ripping and had completely buried the track into Gunsight making the going deep and slow.

The reward was legit.

Gunsight was buffed out and totally fresh.

We caught our breath and dropped in to a backcountry-style powder run that rocked.

I was already pretty tired after that hike.

At the very end of the day we did 2 more Hi Boys and I stopped both times and really eye-balled the Tongue Mai (Church) Double Drop.

It looked good.

And scary…

Daryn showed me how to get to the top of it.

I’d watched Noah Gaffney hit this before Christmas.

Shen he dropped he hit rocks on the first landing and took an awesome crash.

I was confident that after 86″ of snow, that first pad was gonna be rock-free.

My first apres ski in years! image: snowbrains

I went for it.

The damn thing goes 0 to 60 in about 1 second.

The speed you generate as you acid drop off the first rock – 9.8 meters per second squared – isn’t slowed down much by the steep angled middle pad.

The pad seems to supercharge that gravitation speed and cannonball blast you directly down into the landing like a dart flying at a target.

I was just a touch forward as I darted off that second air…

I knew immediately I was bound for a front tumble so committed to it and did a clean somersault.

Church Double Drop at Alta, UT. image: snowbrains

The first thing to make contact after my skis was my butt – that’s how hard I flipped it.

I took one more tumble after the first flip and skied off.

I felt like that was about as bad as it could have gone – so I went back up for another.

Birds going crazy for bird seed at the patrol shack at 10K feet. image: snowbrains

At 4:30 pm I was back on top of the Tongue Mai Double and truly exhausted.

I wanted it though and knew it was 100% mental.

Dumping snow on Collins chair. image: snowbrains

I just had to raise my level of fire to maximum for about 10 seconds – which I knew I could do.

I barked and yelled and counted off “3, 2, 1, drop!”

Drop, 9.8m/s/s, land, rocket speed, launch, full grunting 100% leg muscle flex absorption on landing, almost lose it in the high-speed runout, finally get it under control, swear, laugh, stop, sigh…

Yesterday was an epic day at Alta Ski Area, UT.

Note: we have stayed out of the backcountry everyday since we got back from BC on Jan 13 due to the high ongoing avalanche danger in Utah. Please be careful out there

Thanks, Utah!