As you might have gathered by now, I am fixated with Mt. Superior. Because it is such an alluring mountain to me, it is not enough to look up at it all the time. I wanted to be on the top looking down. So to celebrate the end of a long 3-month study process for the P.E., I took a journey on April 14, 2012 to find that elusive view from The Top Down.
It is a 2 hour skin and hike via Pole Line Pass starting across from Alta. There are a few false summits along the ridge line toward Superior, and here is one of them. It reminded me a lot of the appropriately-named Misery Hill, a false summit below the peak of Mt. Shasta in northern California.
Here is my new-found friend Justin making the final push to the real summit. I passed 14 people (!) all heading to the summit of Mt. Superior. (Word is getting out that Mother Nature is shutting down this poor winter early, so BC skiers are getting their licks in whenever and however they can at this point.)
Finally, the summit arrived when my lungs and legs were burning and there was no further vertical steps to take. I was so excited to be on top, I decided to do some self-photos, which didn't turn out the greatest.
But, having made friends along the ridge line with other like-minded skiers, they obliged and took some better summit shots.
Note Monte Cristo in the background. I was tempted to keep going and break trail along the ridge line, but then remembered the burning legs and lungs and decided that one monolithic peak was enough.
Now, it was time to head down. But which direction? The beauty of being at 11,132 feet is you have oh so many options! Mill B South past the Sundial, and the accompanying "rock sharks" waiting to bite my skis?
The South Face back to Snowbird's Entry 4?
Or The Main Col down into pristine Cardiac Bowl?
I chose the latter. And it was the right choice, to the point I had to re-summit and do it twice! Here is our "skier's artwork" on Cardiacs canvas of 14" of fresh powder.
My feelings of this most Superior Summit of the Wasatch are summarized in a poem by Rene Daumal:
"You cannot stay on the summit forever;
You have to come down again.
So why bother in the first place?
Just this:
What is above knows what is below,
But what is below does not know what is above.
One climbs, one sees.
One descends, one sees no longer.
But one has seen.
There is an art of conducting oneself
By the memory of what one saw higher up.
When one can no longer see,
One can at least know."
