Wasatch Mountains, UT, Report: Winter Camping in Couloir Country

Report from Saturday, March 9, 2024

I pulled into a deserted camp at the base of a very tall, very steep, unforgiving mountain riddled with cliffs and couloirs.

It was now past 4 p.m. and the shade of the surrounding peak brought with it a mid-winter chill that stabbed right through my gore-tex coat.

Time to set up camp and be quick about it—it was getting colder.

Juan and Jan (pronounced Yon), the two friends whom I had agreed to meet at this forlorn outpost, were still out in the mountains going after big lines they had set their sights on in the morning. 

The sun was going down and it was getting cold…

They showed up with big smiles on their faces right as I got my sleeping arrangement set up.

Before they even had a chance to speak I could tell the snow conditions were good.

They were happy.

We started a fire. It kept us warm for some time, along with the whiskey and rum. The packed dinners my girlfriend made me hit just right. Then came time for a big slumber before a big day the next morning. 

Except that I could hardly sleep.

It was my first time winter camping and I brought the wrong kind of sleeping pad.

Inflatable.

Big mistake. I was cold. I managed a couple of winks of sleep but every time I stayed asleep for more than a few moments my body started shivering which jolted me back to being awake as a sort of survival mechanism.

Funny how just being out here in the wrong dress code could kill you.

After what felt like a long night, we got up, ate breakfast, and shot the shit with a touring party walking past our camp just as the sun crested the mountain.

They were classic Wasatch crushers who must’ve started hiking not long after we went to bed the night before.

After that we talked about our plan and decided to split up; Juan would go for a technical descent involving several rappels on the Montogemery Couloir, and Jan and I, another fellow Polack, would try for the upper cirque.

Our zone looked divine from camp.

There was a buffet of couloirs, steep faces, and powder aprons to pick from.

We started walking in the strong March sun.

Walking up a big basin, the wind picked up and started drifting dipping-dots-like snow.

So much so that Jan’s skin track was getting buried in front of me and I had to pave my own path.

Finally, after what felt like both a long time and no time at all, we were at the bottom of this large cirque with cliffs and chutes all around.

I picked an obvious couloir right in the middle that was walled and steep.

The top section of it was around 60º in steepness, which I didn’t realize until I was up there.

I went up there.

Small, cascading spindrifts of tumbling snow gently passed me by on the booter up, giving the snow a sort of pulsating effect, like that of a heartbeat.

The mountain was truly alive.

I kept dancing up it as I pondered its secrets.

After going back and forth in my mind for some time about whether or not I should pull the final move to the ridge above an exposed, deadly cliff I took out my ice ax and went for it.

Heart pounding fast in deep powder snow.

At the top, the view made all my struggles worth it. Lone Peak, Utah Lake, Little Cottonwood, and the Salt Lake Valley were all in my field of vision.

For a while, I stood above what felt like a Kingdom.

But the winds didn’t relent.

Everything feels less steep once you clip into your skis.

But this one still felt pretty fucking steep.

I envisioned my line:

1. Take one sweeping left traverse above the death cliff
2. A tight right turn on the fluted left flank of the couloir
3. Then down the belly of it, minding my sluff. 

After the first turn, my sluff ran hard and fast, as expected. 

I waited.

I forced myself to wait one second longer than I thought before charging on. 

A second can make all the difference in this kind of terrain. 

Then I kept on sending down.

The snow was good. 

It was a little windaffected but I was still getting face shots. 

The chute sluffed some more but this time I didn’t wait.

I tried to ski through it but ate my mistake hard as the sluff bucked me off my skis and to my side, not far from the couloir’s rock wall. 

Quickly I popped back up and kept on skiing, staying to the side of the sluff this time.

After a few more great turns I emerged out from the jaws of the couloir and into the apron below to where Jan was waiting.

We were both happy.

Jan had skied some powder laps on the surrounding apron.

I skied the couloir.

And Juan radioed that he had succeeded on Montgomery.

We all had a drink back at camp to celebrate.

After a victory party lap down a low-angle powder field by camp, the winds started picking up from the south and so we packed up our belongings and skied down to the highway.

It was still another 3,000’+ of decent skiing to the road.

Bonus turns.

The real bonus, though?

Skiing in an utterly magnificent zone in your own backyard with great company in stellar conditions.

As the crow flies, our camp was only a few miles from my home in Sandy.

But being there, I could have been in another galaxy as far as I was concerned.

Overall learned much about winter camping and my home mountain range.

At times in that first bitterly cold night, as I struggled to fall asleep in the fetal position of my girlfriend’s sleeping bag, I asked myself: “Why am I doing this shit?”

But on the drive down the canyon, after we slammed our heavy packs stuffed to the brim with camping equipment and climbing gear into the back of Juan’s car, I was now asking myself:

“When do I get to do that again?”

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