Stonecrusher Still Goes

We all knew the storm was heading to Utah. The cool air was what most of us cared about. The potential snow was what some of us cared about too. Unfortunately, only the cool air and rain arrived. Web cameras showed no signs of the white stuff all morning. But when you plan a ski day, pack your bag and are ready to go, you don’t back out easily. So we drove up LCC to see what was up with this storm. It was true, no snow had fallen, well, a light dusting was detected in some very high areas. But nothing that would do us any good. We looked at Suicide Chute from Collins parking lot and I told Nate he can forget about it, there was at least 150 feet of rock and waterfall to navigate and that wasn’t what I signed up for! So we decided that hiking up Alta would result in a fun day at the very least. We skinned up Corkscrew with thoughts of Stonecrusher or Baldy Shoulder. When we looked up the Crusher we decided it was our best bet. There was only a hundred feet of dirt and rock and we’d be back on snow. It turned out to be the correct decision. We were able to skin up 85% of the run and then we began slipping out. We booted the remainder and found ourselves on the edge of snow and rock, on a steep slope and not a lot of room to maneuver. It was a beautiful spot to soak in the Utah mountains. The snow was fun and relatively fast. We set up a narwhal follow-shot from the top and almost collided, I heard Nate yell out and I thought something seriously bad had happened behind me but actually it was just our near collision. Stonecrusher was fun and fast all the way to the bottom. We accessed some of Lone Pine that was smooth and Corkscrew was more of the same. All in all a very fun and worthwhile day at Alta. We even ran into an old Army vet at the base who told us about his skiing days in ’85. We saw 2 other skiers up there today and 1 had precluded with nice tracks down the groomer. This storm might actually produce a little snow tonight. Stonecrusher will be G2G manana!