Baldy Chute Brah

I did a nice tour Saturday morning (May 21st!!!) with Dan. It started out a little late, but turned into a wonderful day. Alta Ski resort has shut its chairs down for the season, which leaves the mountain open to those willing to climb it. Dan and I are two of many. We left the truck a little after 8:30 am and began our climb. It was a beautiful day (which resulted in my face getting fried!) for a tour and the snow actually turned out to be pretty good. We decided to go all the way up to the top of Mt. Baldy. On our way we ran into a Snowbird ski patroller who we stopped and chatted with for a minute. Shortly after we heard a very loud noise, I looked across the canyon and saw the aftermath of an avalanche spewing over the Hellgate cliffs! Dan and I quickly busted out our cameras and I stretched my 55mm lens to its max trying to get a decent photo. It continued to release a few times an hour for the rest of the time we were up there. Neat! (but scary at the same time). We were almost to the top when Dan's dynafits started giving him fits on the icy top, so he decided to boot the rest of the way up. I skinned, which I'm not sure was the best idea, but I made it.
Once at the top, we looked around for a second while we transitioned and then it was time for the descent! Dan went first and laid down a nice line in the chute, straight-lined the bottom, and stopped in a clump of trees to get some photos of my ride. I put some nice turns down for about half of the chute and then pretty much straight-lined the rest... that is until things got a little hairy and I did a couple cartwheels. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but somehow my weight got shifted really far forward and a lanyard on my glove actually got caught on my binding, I pulled real hard, and actually snapped the lanyard, but it was to late. Classic.. nosedive, airborne cartwheels, and then kablammo! He's got some cool shots of the wreckage that you can check out here. Luckily the snow was soft enough that I didn't sustain any injuries, it was a hell of a crash though! Once I met up with Dan, we party-rode the rest of the run back down to the car, passing a group of snow-shoe-ers.

Over and Out

Spring semester 2011 is officially over! After three days that were very taxing, both physically and mentally, I have completed my finals and am done with this semester. Today was calculus and physics. Calculus was easy, but my hell was that physics exam hard! I mean, I thought it would be difficult and knew that I didn't fully understand everything that had happened this semester, but this exam really put into perspective how much I didn't retain from this semester. All well, everyone else had a difficult time with it, all I can do at this point is hope for a low average and hope that I beat it. Time will tell. One thing that always bothers me about the end of semesters is that you never typically find out how you did on anything from about the last month or so; you don't know how you did on your assignments, you don't know how you did on your projects, and you don't know how you did on your final exams. You just get your grades when they are posted. Kind of frustrating. Anyways, I'm exhausted and shouldn't have even began writing this, but I did, and now it's done. Time for sleep!

Finally

Today I had my first of three finals.. sadly this was the easy one, but it went well. It was in my mechanical engineering course. Even though this one went well, I'm glad to have it out of the way. My two remaining finals are in Calculus and Engineering Physics. Tomorrow is going to be a long and arduous day of studying that I'm not particularly looking forward to. I just need to keep telling myself that in a day and a half I will be a free man... for about a week and a half before summer semester begins. :/ Hopefully I can get some fishing and biking in... maybe even some splitboarding!

April Showers Bring Me Powder!!

It snowed quite a bit in this, the last week of april. Over the night of April 29th it dumped about a foot and a half of low density powder. Although I was reluctant, Dan talked me into doing a tour. I said I had other things to do, which I did, I have three finals next week. But, I went anyways... and it was amazing!! Such a good day. We skinned up Argenta, which is a couple thousand vertical feet, we ascended the head wall and took a peak down a chute that we wanted to do. It looked a little sketchy so we decided to continue along the ridge and take a peak at the next one. Along the way we got a view down the East Couloir of Kessler, which was pretty stellar. We continued along the ridge line and dropped down one of the chutes. The snow was awesome and it was such a fun run. Here's a little multimedia display for you.. and the GoPro's splitboarding test-run!

Splitboarding, a set on Flickr.

Argenta from Darin.