Twin Canyons

To start things off, this post is quite a bit delayed and I apologize for any lack of detail that might be as a result of that. With that in mind I have had my next greatest experience in the back-country.. sort of. With every tour I get out and do my love and admiration for the sport of back-country touring grows. Even if things don't necessarily turn out the way you want or expect them to, good experiences are at your fingertips. When dealing with the delicate and dangerous balance of nature, you have to move in accordance with the current conditions of the mountain or your gonna get got. You have to know when call it quits and respect that the nature of nature requires us mere mortals to do so. Enough of that though, let's get on with the TR!

Our day started again at Alta on a Wednesday morning. Our party met at the swamp and pooled up to Alta in hopes of another great day in the back country. We started up the trail but shortly in had to take a quick break and were past up by a splitboarder and a guy on skis. 4 splitters vs. 1 skier :)

Anyways, we resumed our approach on the mountain. Dan led the way for most of the way in. What an incredible trail breaker! Dan is an animal when it comes to breaking trail. I can't even keep up with him and I get to use his freshly installed skin track. But hey, it's my first season, give me a break!

Things were going pretty good until we got up towards Patsy where we the weather really socked in and visibility was very limited. Not gonna lie, it was pretty intense. We chose to traverse this face and it was a tad bit sketchy so we took it one at a time, but man I was still freaked out! Then we continued to head up and the trees were so crazy, they were just caked with snow that had been pretty wind blown. Once we got on top we debated whether to call it good where we were or keep going in hopes of finding some better lines over on Wolverine. We sat there for quite a while debating, which was later revealed to be the theme of day, until we decided to keep pushing on. It would also be later revealed that our decision was a good one. :) So we trucked on. We stopped along the way and checked out a couple of pretty cool chutes that looked like fun. Also, we took a minute to take in the scenery.



Well, this post is beginning to get rather lengthy and drawn out so I'll try and get to the good part and wrap it up! All in all we got some awesome turns! This is a pathetic way to post, but here are some pictures that are worth at least a thousand words, especially when those words are the disconnected ramblings coming out of my fingers... :)












You may have noticed that the last few photos look awfully similar to the Brighton area... very observant, it is! At the bottom of Wolverine bowl we were gonna hit this chute and skin back up Twin Lakes pass and back to Alta... Well we sat at the top of the chute for roughly an hour debating the safety of the chute. We dug pits, prayed to the snow gods, thought about it, looked at it, jumped on it, threw massive snowballs down it. We bailed. Sometimes you just gotta get out of those situations. We were all fairly sure that it would be safe to ride, but what if it wasn't? There was a bunch of snow above that would funnel down into the chute, most likely rip down to the ground about 3 or 4 feet deep, and well, that would be the end of my stupid posts on the internet. If you have to sit around for an hour debating the safety... just get out of there. So we decided to ride down to Brighton and catch a bus back to the swamp lot. It turned out to not to be a big hassle at all and it was good to figure out the bus system if we have hopes of multi-canyon tours in the future. So all in all, it was OK.. AND we lived to tell the tale. :)

So we finally get back to the swamp lot, Dan's rig is still up at Alta, so Doug gives him a ride up there while I take a short nap in the back of my truck because my keys were in Dan's car. We decided to top the day off with some delicious and somewhat over-priced food from the Porcupine. Mmmm, it was good. I got the enchiladas and recommend them to all!