ALTA, UT — On Monday, July 7, while he was hiking in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Steve sent me a photo from his cell phone of Gunsight at Alta with a ton of snow, still. On Wednesday, I asked if he would be up for skiing it that weekend. He replied that he and Jordan had already planned to ski the chute on Sunday, and that I could join them. And so the plan was born.
On Saturday, I worked out the logistics of carrying my skis and boots, prepared my pack, and confirmed a spot to meet them before heading up the canyon.
We first drove up to the Albion Basin side of Alta to scope out our intended target--Gunsight. The snow had melted some since Monday, but it looked perfectly skiable.
Our route was still in question when we started out hiking up into Collins Gulch. Generally, we anticipated hiking up the dirt utility road, and then traversing across to Gunsight's entrance, much like one would access the run when skiing. One thing Steve had mentioned on the way up is how much steeper the mountains feel when hiking them compared to skiing down them. Although I had anticipated a fairly sketchy walk across the upper slopes of Alta's Collins ridge, I didn't anticipate that what Steve had said would ring so true.
The walk up the road was fairly benign. I was out of shape, it was my first "serious" hike of the year, and I was lugging about 50 pounds of ski gear up the mountain, so I struggled to keep pace with Steve and Jordan. I just kept plugging along though.
Eventually, we got to a point where it made sense to leave the dirt road and head across the scree slope and up to the entrance to Gunsight. I started out on the scree slope just fine. It was loose, but there were plenty of spots solid enough to hold my weight without terra firma sliding out from under me.
As the slope beneath got steeper and steeper, however, my wits began to betray me. I had slowed to a crawl as the places where solid earth showed through the rocks disappeared. Each step took anywhere between 30 seconds and a few minutes to complete, as I prodded the scree before me for some semblance of solid footing.
Steve and Jordan, however, were moving fairly quickly over the scree. Several times they stopped to wait for me as I slowly made my way across the slope. I think they may have been more comfortable on the scree because they had more experience on that type of surface, or they just were more confident in their ability to stop themselves from sliding down the mountain. Whatever it was, I was taking a really long time compared to them.
Although I was not comfortable with the situation, I never froze up. I wasn't paralyzed in fear. Rather, I was just being very careful--probably too careful (as usual). Jordan offered to help me across by taking my pack, but I refused the help. My pack wasn't the problem. The rocks sliding out from underneath me on each step were the problem. While he made his way over to me, however, he discovered that negotiating the rocks without poles was much easier than with poles, which both he and I had been using. So, instead he just took my poles, and, almost immediately I felt more confident in my steps. Without the poles, my hands were free, which gave me four points to place my weight instead of just two.
While Jordan was coming back to help me, Steve had gone up to the chute's entrance to drop off his pack. He then came back down and offered to carry my pack over the last 50 yards or so of the scree. This time, however, I conceded because we really needed to get off that slope. Rocks were starting to come down from above us. So, I gave him my pack, finished crossing the final stretch of scree, and hiked up the small hill up to the chute's entrance.
After the slightly terrifying 2-hour ordeal of walking across that scree slope, I was a bit shaken. The sight of the chute didn't exactly make me more relaxed.
My psyche was a bit shot at that point, so the chute's steep snow-less entrance and the possibility of a difficult process to get skiing made me a little nervous. I knew even then, however, that once I got on the snow with my skis on, everything would be fine.
The chute looked perfectly skiable, although it was littered with rocks and other natural debris. Gunsight isn't quite as steep, as narrow, or as long as the Main Chute on Mount Baldy. The snow, however, didn't start at the top of chute. There was about a 20 foot gap between the top of the chute and where the snow started. Conveniently, there was a rope in that gap that would make descending to the snow relatively easy.
We sat down and ate some lunch at the top of the chute, which gave me time to get my nerves back. After some time, the nervousness caused by crossing the scree slope completely subsided, and I started to get excited about the prospect of skiing.
We weren't quite sure yet the best way to descend to the snow, put our boots on, and get skiing. The gap between the top of the chute and the start of the snow posed an interesting problem because it really didn't seem safe to descend it with ski boots on our feet, packs on our backs, and our skis in hand. So, we unlashed our skis, and ferried them down to the snow with our hiking boots still on. Then we retreated back to the top of the chute to put on our ski boots. Finally, we descended back into the chute for the last time with our packs.
Once we were on the narrow patch of snow at the top, we slid down a little ways to give us some more room to put on our skis. Steve and Jordan were telemarking and I skied on regular alpine gear.
Steve got the honors. He skied a couple turns in the gray-ish snow near the top, and then fell--a rare thing for him. He quickly got back up, however, and skied down a ways where he set himself up to film Jordan and I skiing down to him.
I went next. I sideslipped my way down until the slope widened out a bit more. Also, the snow there was better than right near the top. The snow was generally choppy, and not entirely soft. I took a few deliberate, skidded turns to get a feel for the snow, and to avoid the rocks. I opened up the throttle a bit a short time later, and then came to a stop near Steve.
I went first for the next stage of our run. This part of the run had the best snow, and I skied some really good turns. I stopped with about a third of the run remaining to wait for Steve and Jordan.
Steve led the way down the rest of the run. After skiing Gunsight proper, we had to take off our skis and walk across some grass to get to a patch of snow to the right of Gunsight. We skied the last 75 yards or so down to a spot where we would shed our ski gear for, perhaps, the last time this ski season.
From there, we basically just had to walk down the bottom half of the Albion Basin side of Alta Ski Area, and then over to Steve's car in the Collins parking lot.
Our route down was still in question as we swapped winter gear for summer gear. Jordan had proposed that we head south across the meadow and then down Greeley Hill to the dirt road. After he did a little reconnaissance, however, he decided that the hill was too steep to hike down, so we instead did what (I think) Steve had initially proposed. We hiked up over the little ridge into Greeley Bowl, walked across and down to the dirt road that brought us down to the base of the Sugarloaf lift, and, finally, down to the base of Alta via a trail/dirt road that is Home Run in the winter.
It took us less than an hour to hike down to the car from Gunsight. We stopped at Porcupine Pub and Grill for pizza, which put me into a serious post-hiking/skiing coma that lasted for the next 24 hours.
Here are some photos that Steve took:
- Jordan and I taking a break
- Hiking across a sketchy scree slope
- Lunch atop Gunsight
- A "Triple Carlo" (group shot) atop Gunsight
- Me skiing Gunsight
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