Sunday, April 13, 2008

Epic Tour

Friday I headed out with Alex and EJ on a backcountry tour in the cottonwoods. It wound up to be an epic day - 17 miles, 6,000 vertical feet - and only 4 runs!

Here's our trail.
We from the upper parking lot at Alta we skinned up the cat track to the ridgeline, headed up towards Patsy Marley, then dropped into Wolverine Cirque.


We then skinned out of Wolverine back to the ridgeline, traversed west, and dropped into Silver Fork on the west side of Solitude's Honeycomb Canyon. By this time the sun was heating up the snowpack so we headed toward Big Cottonwood, thinking we'd turn west and climb the ridgeline to Silver Fork and drop into Alta. There wasn't a turnoff and we wound up in Solitude, hitched a ride up canyon to Brighton, and bummed a chairlift ride.

At the top the ski patrol had closed access to Millicent, so we had to enter the bowl and climb up a chute, which was half skin, half bootpack. Once on the ridgeline we skinned up to Wolverine.Then just drop off Wolverine and under Patsy Marley to the car.