Local Shoulder Season

From Friday, April 24th, around 8:30am

The days are long and the snowline creeps higher and higher. With the banner snow year that the Wasatch Mountains had, one has to take full advantage of it. I woke at 5am on Friday as I knew Kendall Card from Base Camp Communications would be waiting at the parking lot across from the Silver Lake fire station (more on that later). I threw my gear into my Ford Hybrid and pulled out of my garage - 17 degrees the thermometer on my car read!

Needless to say, I pulled into the meeting place a few minutes early, geared up and selected my SKI playlist on my ipod. 6:05...6:10...6:15. Departure from the car to see the sunrise from Mt Baldy was to be at 6:00am. Kendall flaked (I woke him to confirm).

I set off at a relaxed pace, able to parallel the Sterling high speed quad and was able to get a shot off of the sunrise coming over the Uinta Mountains. See Brian Kahn's facebook page as I did a little promo shot for http://www.localshavemorefun.com/

I decided not to go all the way to the top as it looked a little windblown (we had a major snowstorm a few nights before). I unskinned, tightened my boots and had 25 sick turns, then a flat run out, where I passed Ryan the construction worker on his way up and then about 15 more windpacked turns.

I skinned back up for one more run, upset that there was someone else out with me, but more secure as bears are hungry this time of year and now I didn't feel the need to whistle every 30 seconds.

An epic day, maybe the last runs of the year. A great day to reflect back on the season we had and to curse my sleeping comrade Kendall as well.