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Mindy and I hiked up Silver Fork drainage today. The trail passes some old mines on the way to a wide-open cirque with yet another old mine. The hike to the cirque was not steep, but it was fairly long.

When we got to the cirque, however, we weren't sure where the trail went from there. We wanted to make it to the top of the ridge to look down into Little Cottonwood Canyon's Grizzly Gulch, so we just started hiking up the steep scree slope in front of us. This idea wasn't the best one I've ever had. Not only was the scree nearly impossible to hike on, the rock cliff we hiked next to for handholds and support was made of something like brittle rock salt. It was weird.

Because the scree was so difficult to hike on, I had climbed onto the brittle rock and tried climbing up that way. Soon thereafter, however, the route became much too steep, and I was stuck for a minute. I couldn't go up, but I also didn't really want to go down because the rock was so brittle that it really didn't give me any purchase. I finally did (slowly) make it down, however.

Next, we tried hiking up a grassy, treed area that was just as steep, but it, at least, gave us some traction. I hiked my way up fairly easily as I made switchbacks amongst the trees. Mindy, however, went straight up. At one point, she was laying on her stomach using both her hands and feet for grip.

Finally, we both made it to the ridge unscathed. The view of Alta Ski Area was awesome. After a quick lunch on the ridge, we hiked back down and then stopped at Silver Fork Lodge for a more formidable lunch.

Mindy and I just got back from the 311 concert at USANA Amphitheatre. Matisyahu opened for 311. He's this tall, lanky, Hasidic Jew who raps, sings and even beatboxes in front of some pretty decent reggae music played by his band. He was a bit boring, but I really like his music.

311 were just OK this time around. They seemed to be going through the motions a bit. Or maybe I didn't enjoy the show that much because the setlist wasn't very high energy and the sound quality was terrible.

Setlist

1. Homebrew
2. All Mixed Up
3. Taiyed
4. Love Song
5. Sweet
6. You Wouldn't Believe
7. Large in the Margin
8. Applied Science
9. There's Always and Excuse
10. Frolic Room
11. Eons
12. From Chaos
13. Amber
14. Nix Hex
15. Gap
16. 8:16 a.m.
17. What Was I Thinking
18. Creatures (For a While)
encore:
19. Freak Out
20. Beyond the Gray Sky
21. Down

This weekend seven of us drove up to Bear Lake and rented a boat. We just swam in the Caribbean-like turquoise blue lake and, later, we all tried to wakeboard. It was fun.

Probably the "highlight" of the day, however, was when the wind picked up and the weather started to get a little sketchy. At the time, British Dave was trying to wakeboard, but the changing weather and the bigger waves made he and/or the boat drift so far away from one another other that it made his wakeboarding attempts very difficult. Eventually, we called Dave back to the boat, and we started off back towards the shore.

We were battling two to three foot waves as we headed back to shore. Before we could get there, though, the boat suddenly took on a ton of water--about three waves worth before it stopped. We had to empty the coolers to bail about a foot of water out of the boat. Then, after we started back toward shore when we were sure the boat wouldn't sink, the engine died because it had gotten flooded. The weather wasn't improving, and a boat we had flagged down for help left us. We were stuck in the middle of Bear Lake with the weather getting worse.

Finally, another (bigger) boat came out to pull us back to shore. About 5 minutes after they started towing us, though, our tow rope broke. Thankfully, they had another one, and we made it back to shore safely. Crazy!

Today, Sam, Brendan, Brian, Andrew and I hiked up Mount Baldy from Alta and skied its Main Chute. Today was the second time I skied Main Chute, but I think it was everyone else's first time (except maybe Andrew). I skied it a little better this time--especially the bottom third of the chute--but I still approached it more passively than I should have given the good snow conditions.

ALTA, UT — I went skiing at Alta with friends of my old boss at Snowbird. They are all way better skiers than me, which is why it's so fun skiing with them. They never take the easy way down. Before our first run, they already started talking about skiing Baldy chute, which made me both excited and nervous all at once. After a few "warm-up" runs, we fueled up at the mid-mountain restaurant and hiked up Mount Baldy to ski its main chute, which is a 750 vertical foot, 40-degree steep, 30-foot wide chute dropping off the summit of Mount Baldy. I linked a few pictures below to illustrate the experience. The photos were taken by Steve (my old boss) with his cell phone during the trip.

With our skis slung over our shoulders, we started our hike from the top of the Sugarloaf lift near the connection between Alta and Snowbird ski resorts. Given the lack of snow this season, we walked over rocks for the first part of the hike until we reached the bottom of a bunch of cliff bands about 200 vertical feet above one of the main trails. From there we walked across the snowfield (carefully) until we reached the boot-packed trail that went straight up the mountain.

The hardest part was walking across the snowfield to get to the bootpacked trail going up the mountain. Everyone else in my group was ahead of me. Although the trail up the mountain was a 45-degree steep snow covered face, it was no harder than walking up a staircase because of the prior boot tracks. The view back down was dizzying, but since I was actually leading the pack at this point (by default because the rest of the rest of the group ahead of me had walked right past it), I didn't have time to really look around a lot.

After climbing up the 400-foot face, we reached the ridge. From there the walking was easier, but my skis were rubbing my shoulders raw, my hands were going numb from having to reach up to hold onto my skis, and the sun was freakin' hot. Before heading to the chute, we hung out on the summit for a bit to enjoy the view into Snowbird (on the other side of Mount Baldy) and down into the Salt Lake Valley 7,000 feet below. Despite the 80-degree temperatures in the valley, it was still pretty cold on Mount Baldy.

Next, we skied down the gentle slopes of the the wind-scorn summit to the top of the main Baldy chute. It looked pretty intense, but it was much wider than I had imagined, and a little less steep. I had certainly skied terrain this steep before.

Chris, a 44-year-old ex-ski instructor went first. He skied it all the way to the bottom without stopping. Jordan, a search-and-rescue trained graphic designer from Vermont went next. Steve, my old boss at Snowbird, dropped in off a nearly vertical wall of snow on the North side of the chute. He also made it most of the way down without stopping. I snaked into the chute next, but I didn't start skiing it seriously until after this kid from Buffalo skiing with the most ridiculous old-school technique I have ever seen, blew past me.

So, a 44-year-old guy, a skinny ticket office supervisor, a Vermonter skiing on borrowed skis, and a dude from Buffalo who just started skiing on shaped skis this season kicked my ass down the chute.

I skied it OK. I definitely skied a little more cautiously than I probably needed to, but I didn't want to ruin my day by risking a fall. The snow at the top was excellent, but the chute is fairly popular when it's open, so it had a lot of bumps, which made it difficult. I had to stop a lot because I could feel myself getting out of control a bit, but I skied well in between my breaks. Skiing in between the rock walls was surreal.

With these guys, skiing Baldy Chute wasn't even the end of the day. The next run, we took this gnarly, rocky traverse all the way to the front of the ridge that divides Alta in half. And then we had to take our skis off to walk over some rocky bare spots. Then, we had to hike up a bit. Then, finally, we had to sideslip down between some tight trees over dirt-covered snow to get to "Alf's High Rustler," which is the signature run at Alta. All that remained was some skiing down 1,000 vertical feet of slushy bumps back to the base.

Of course, the day wasn't even finished after that run! We took another run. This time we skied the lift-accessible Baldy Shoulder down to the base, and closed the day with a couple beers at the Goldminer's Daughter hotel.

Now for a couple pictures Steve took with his cell phone...

- The view from Mount Baldy's summit
- Main Chute from the top

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★