Friday, April 3, 2009

The Banana chute and Mt Allen. Mt Allen's NW rib from the NW, framed by the Banana chute on the left, and Scary Larrys on the right.  There are some difficult lines in here waiting for a wandering alpinist with rock boards. 

Epic day in the Snowbasin backcountry last Tuesday; we did 5 runs off the top of Mt Allen finishing with a run out to 27th street (ok, kind of a loong hike out the bottom ;-)! I thought it was around 16,500 total vertical, but my buddies altimeter said over 17,000. 



Scary Larrys runs from the uppermost left to the lower right. Its hard to pick out here, but it is an epic chute. I'll have to try to get some good photos of this chute; its hard to see it all from anywhere, except from the air I suppose. 

Sunday, March 29, 2009



We hit the "two trees" Finger chute today. Its becoming an 8 foot vertical drop minimum off the cornice now, onto steep hard snow, with 8'' of fresh on it; much harder to get into than last time I did it. I tagged a couple rocks moving right, then got down into better snow. The base has settled alot with the warm weather we had; those rocks just don't want to go away this time of year. No worries about cornice stability, after the way they were bombed last storm cycle. My buddy Steve dropped in, and a young visitor from the midwest, Josiah, did it too. We showed Josiah the main Banana chute entrance, and also  some quality north-facing trees toward the Coldwater saddle. I crashed into a stump on the runout, and now have a large bruise on the right hip to show for it.  I talked with my chiropractor about it, and didn't knock anything out of alignment, thankfully. Interesting that he didn't recommend ice for a large muscle bruise; ice for joint injuries/sprains, yes; ice for muscle bruises didn't test out though (muscle testing).  I put a magnet on it, and arnica gel, and it healed quickly. 

Heres a view looking down Two Trees, before the last storm; about the same coverage though.