My wife Tracey, dog Eva and I were looking to do some skiing last Saturday but knew our local resorts were unobtainable, so we went out to the Uinta’s to get away from it all. While not exactly an alpine start we got to the Beaver Creek trailhead at 10:00 AM and parked right in front of the entrance gate trail map. We skinned up and took a picture of the map, like savvy kids do, and we were off. It was a sunny zero degrees with zero people around. Perfect.
The higher slopes opened
into low angle meadows and dwarf, standing-dead trees. Thirty degrees in the trees is usually our avalanche
mantra for worry free fun in the sun, even on high hazard days. The pucker brush and understory that
populates these low elevation ridges was buried this year with the copious
snowpack, leaving some exquisite rollie-pollie hummocks.
We poked around for a while at the top of the openings and
agreed on a shaded, north-facing gully, similar to the low angle Driveway slope
at Canyons, and we de-skinned quickly so we wouldn’t catch a chill. Tracey took the first line to the left in the
meadow, skiing smoothly and more confidently as she descended. When she stopped and whistled, from her
island-of-safety, I released the hound.
Eva plowed downhill in Tracey’s tracks initially, but eventually
centerpunched the deep untracked snow as she gained momentum and bravado.
When it was my turn, I checked twice to make sure my boots
were buckled and in ski mode and my heal lifters were fastened down. I had not toured in three years, for various nefarious
reasons, and I was unsure of myself and ability. Starting slow, I hugged the left side of the gully,
and I was surprised how good the snow was and how easy the turns came. I gained speed and began reading the slope
further ahead, always a good sign. The pucker-brush
hummocks turned into soft moguls to be seen and skied deliberately. Before long I was launching dynamic Telemarks, hopping in the air between bumps to switch feet, aspect and
angle. At the bottom I dug in deep for
the last turn and stopped completely before releasing my final, perfect pinky-toe
carve. ‘Its like riding a bike’, I thought.
I was back. Reborn.
We loaded up and headed into Guero’s in Kamas for a late
lunch where we ate ten-dollar burritos the size of footballs. We made it back home easily in time for beers
and popcorn on the couch in our Long-Johns and the evening football game. We don’t need a crowded industrial ski resort
to have a great day; just the gravity of the mountains, Bluebird skies, fresh powder and each other.
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