red baldy-linking up south faces

I’m trying like crazy to get out of town, but weather keeps happening and some trips have fallen through. Luckily the backyard snowpack is holding on. A reported 10 inches of new snow is reason enough to go out and explore. Lars K and I wanted to check out some south facing lines off Red Baldy.

Lars had to be to work by noon and we’d be lucky to have the new snow last that long before it turned to mush. Start early. Watch the sun come up.

The north side of Red Baldy was a wind blasted pile of junk, but we held out a little bit of hope for the backside.

The mighty Timp. The wind was blowing cold on the ridge and we transitioned quickly.

Bingo! The “Icefall” looking tasty, but we figured there would be a crust underneath the few inches of new fluff.

Lars dropped in a bit tentatively to feel it out.

One, two, three turns of over the boot powder. Sometimes it’s really nice to be so wrong about conditions. And once again the old adage slapped me in the face. You never know until you go. So always go!

I’ve stared down this line for years, but never skied it. It always looked like it drops you into Provo and then you have to hike back out.

After one visit though I’m putting it on my list of Wasatch classics. It’s long and really consistent with a few chokes and stunning scenery. So many of the big long south facing lines in the Wasatch are chutes that get filled with debris and don’t ski so well. This pitch is nice and wide for most of it making it easier to work around frozen piles from wet slides. I imagine that’s the case. We just skied pow.

Sometimes you just laugh because it’s soooo good. That happened today.

This is a shot Lars took of me hogging the line. He might be fast cause he only carries his iphone?!

Still plenty of soft snow and time to lay tracks in it. After all it’s not going to ski itself. Lars was on fire and put in a nice skin track up Silver Creek. I wanted to check out the sister line to the east of Icefall, but we didn’t know how to top back out. Some narrow chutes looked like they might connect. We rolled the dice.

Deep trail breaking, but Lars doesn’t mind. And I didn’t mind that he didn’t mind.

He let me break a little bit.

Does it go, does it go?! The smile says it all!

We had topped right out into this hidden sister line to Icefall. I’ve looked around maps and the interweb and can’t find a name for it. It’s worthy of a name. Maybe “Rockfall”? We skinned across and up towards the arrow.

Some thin wind slabs were encountered, but it was manageable surface stuff. Things were heating up and even though he was breaking deep trail I couldn’t keep up. Lars used to train martial arts and train for MMA, now he just beats mountains into submission.

Some poking around was necessary, cause we’re exploring shit and that’s what explorers do. The top of this little chute connected back into Icefall.

Time to make turns and get off the south aspect.

I like this shot for a couple of reasons. You can see our track below from where we topped out and traversed. Oh and Lars is about to pop out a windslab over some cliffs! It was shallow and not a real threat, but moving snow is always exciting.

We skied all the way down and out and exited near our first run. Cool little link up of these beauties. Sometimes I feel stupid and lazy for not having skied more of these lines over the past umpteen years. However, it’s fun to still be able to go out and find stuff that’s new to me. Pretty much the perfect spring day!