Cutler Ridge and Ben Lomond

After a nice Christmas storm dropped a couple feet of snow on the local peaks, a little bit of backcountry skiing was in order.  The snow was deep and mostly untouched.  I took some pictures and video, but they don't do it justice.  Here's a little clip.  It's poorly made because it is my first attempt at using iMovie, but it's something.

I was skiing with my father-in-law who is learning to ski powder.  He's never really skied powder before, so he was looking pretty good for a first timer.

I apologize for the poor ski footage.  I was using a digital point-and-shoot held in my hand.  I didn't realize until I got home that most of the footage I got was of the sky and the top of the trees.

Ben Lomond Trip

In a week, My wife, my father-in-law, Mark, and I will be heading to Washington to climb Mt. Rainier.  Kelsey and Mark have spent a ton of time in the mountains backpacking, but mountaineering on glaciers will be a new experience for them.  Over the weekend we headed up to Ben Lomond to practice self-arresting, climbing on a rope team, and crevasse rescue.

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Kelsey and Mark.  Ben Lomond is the peak on the far left.

Myself and Kelsey

This is looking up toward the summit from our camp.  A storm came through during the night with really high winds.  We set the tent (Stephenson's Warmlite 3R) up in the open because I wanted to see how it would hold up to the wind.  I had no idea the winds would be so strong.  I would guess that wind gusts during the night were around 70-80mph.  However strong they were, we all agreed that we had never been in winds that strong before. The winds made it impossible to sleep and I spent much of the night waiting for our tent to be ripped apart.  

Here's the tent the next day.  Despite the extremely high winds, the tent is still standing.  In fact, even though I was expecting the tent to be damaged by the winds, it did just fine.  Other than deafening flapping from the tent material, it held up great.  The poles, which are pre-curved, hardly seemed to notice the wind.  They bent slightly under the wind, but not much at all.  I've been in other 4-season tents in winds that weren't nearly this strong and spent much of the night holding the tent up so the winds wouldn't flatten the tent.  I'm definitely super impressed with the wind resistance of the tent.

Nearing the summit

Me and Kelsey on the summit

Ski Touring by Ben Lomond

I just got back from an afternoon of ski touring with a friend of mine from the Weber State Outdoor Program.  They have a great program going on.  Daniel, the Director, and I hiked and skied almost 6,000 vertical feet (3,000 up and 3,000 down) in the Cutler Basin area just below the north slope of Ben Lomond. 

For all those that live in Ogden and are interested in backcountry skiing, check out the Weber Outdoor Program.  They have very knowledgeable staff and they get out in the backcountry whenever there's a storm and conditions are safe.  This year has been rough because of the lack of snow, but there's enough snow where we went to skin all the way up and ski all the way down.  Didn't even do any damage to my skis!

The Outdoor Program is one of Ogden's best kept secrets.  The director and assistant director are AMGA certified mountain guides, avid bc skiers, incredible whitewater paddlers, and everything in between.  They run trips all throughout the year.  Some trips that have been run in the past are Mt Rainier Climbing, Middle Teton and Grand Teton climbing, backpacking, backcountry skiing (with overnight stays in Weber's own yurt), a trip to the Cirque of the Unclimbables to climb Lotus Flower Tower, they run multiple rafting trips each summer, etc.  They also have rental equipment for all of the activities mentioned above.

I had some video from the GoPro, but I am having a hard time getting them to upload.  I'll try to figure it out.  In the mean time, here are some pictures (taken with the GoPro).  These were taken at about 8100ft. 

Just to prove I was there.  I'm usually behind the camera.

Daniel with Ben Lomond (on the left) and Willard Peak (directly above Daniel) in the background.  Beautiful skiing if the snow and weather is better.