Not satisfied with just looking down the Whipple I recruited Darrell Finlayson to join me on a return trip to ski it. And for the sake of clarity, this is not the ‘Whipple’ that is pictured and written about in The Chuting Gallery, that is a misprint. I refer to that as the Whiffle couloir.
Pre-dawn gear preparations.
With really warm daytime temps we got a jump on things with an alpine start.
Darrell skinning up at sunrise.
One of the more interesting looking chutes in the Wasatch.
It was good to see Darrell back to full strength a month after heart surgery.
Darrell leaps in to the upper chute onto some scratchy snow.
I worked over into the sun to try and find better snow.
Conditions were not great.
Ski mountaineering is really about location, location, location.
There were old ski tracks in the snow that led into the gully full of scrub oak and running water. Neither of us knew what the ski/hike/bushwack out would be like. And although it was tempting to find out, we decided to boot back up the chute and ski out the way we came.
Not looking forward to the 1,500ft climb back up and out.
Darrell Finlayson self portrait.
The boot out was a chore as the snow had become sloppy and mushy up to our knees in places.
We topped out after traking turns with the trail breaking duties.
Locating and skiing random remote strips of snow is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
