My Memories of Markoos

Finding a good fishing companion is a rare gift. I define a good companion as one with a sense of adventure, a sense of survival skills, a sense of spontaneity, and a sense of humanity.

Markus Hans Hegewald was all of these things for me. After a long bout with pancreatic cancer, Markoos  finally ended his battle on November 14. Yesterday would have been his 49th birthday.

Even so he has left the earth, his spirit lives on, stronger than ever. He still knows when his birthday is, even from the Other Side. Of all the gifts I could give him on his 49th birthday, I choose to give him the gift of amazing memories. These are most cherished to me because no one can edit them, delete them, or challenge them. The feelings, the laughs, the pictures, the conversations...they belong just to me. And my fine fly-fishing friend Markus. It is how I will remember him and how he will remember me.

Who knows, maybe someone else will appreciate seeing Markus in this setting as well some day in the future.

In the mean time...Happy Birthday my brother!

Soda Butte Creek, Yellowstone, MT

A nice Yellowstone cutt being shown off by Markus.

The Shock and Awe facial expression...attributed to poor diet and poor sleep on these trips.

Markus best GQ Pose  while  night fishing on the Lamar River, Yellowstone.

Gordon, Josh, Markus, Andrew. A nice rainbow from the Upper Provo River.

A proud fisherman showing off his loot!

Gordon, Andrew, Zak, Kevin Hegewald, Mount Superior Night Ski Expedition. Full moon, 5 deg F, 18" fresh powder. Markus took this picture so he's not in it, but he would agree that it is definitely a memory worth saving.

Of Mice and Men (and Cutts)

Every fisherman needs his own bucket list in the world of angling. It is that list to show you are not just concerned about whether you catch them anymore. I have developed this list because I realize more and more what an expansive sport fly fishing is. It is a sport that attracts the Naturalist, the Technician, the Artist, the Recreationist, and the Philosopher, just to name a few. And so the bucket list helps me see fly fishing from a new lens of reality and for new motives. It keeps the sport fresh for me. It keeps me in that wonderfully challenging place called The Learning Curve. I'd like to think I'm getting to the point in my fishing days on Earth that fishing is about more than just bragging rights. There will always be a bigger one that just happened to get away. There will always be someone who has better skills.

But what about HOW you catch them? Does that matter? To this fly fisherman...yes, it does matter.

And speaking of "hows", how many people have caught large cutthroat trout on this fly?

Don't ask me how this thing looks like a mouse, but apparently it does.

I haven't heard of many stories of people who have. In case you were wondering, this is not an oversize caddis on steroids that grew a tail, despite it's looks. Rather, it's a size #1 Mouse. Stories of lurking, predatory trout thrashing the surface to actually feast on a floundering mammal have no doubt thrilled my imagination. What would that experience really look like and feel like as a fly-fisherman?  I have wanted to know that answer for a few years now and have tried to make it happen...but to no avail. Whether I was un-knowledgeable on gear, or lacking confidence on the technique, or lacking the right conditions, or all of the above, I have never had as much as a nibble while going after trout  with mouse.

Until Saturday night.

Matt Brown called me and I called my nephew Josh Hegewald and we had a assembled a party of 3 to go hit Strawberry Reservoir. The weather was absolutely ideal for fly-fishing: no wind, very warm temps (especially for November at 8000 feet!), and golden light at dusk reflecting off water and foothills in all directions. Being able to pick Matt's mind on gear and technique and conditions was exactly what I needed. This fine fly-fisherman had already caught several big trout on mouse patterns, so this was long ago checked off his bucket list.  I feel like relying on his experience made the difference for us that night. 

His biggest and best piece of advice was powerfully simple and simply powerful. "You've got to really believe that you're going to catch  a fish this way." Good stuff... I took that to mean that you've got to fish with an eye of faith. Sounded familiar.

Preview of what's to come.

15 minutes into our casting from the shallow mud flats near the Indian Creek inlet, the first trout suddenly shocked me and "swirled" my fly as I jolted it in.  Note that I did not say he bit the fly, because he certainly didn't. To my surprise, there was no thrashing.  In this swirling motion around the potential meal, the fish makes an attempt to spook the mouse, nudge the mouse,  stun the mouse,  play with the mouse...who really knows? After the swirl, he did take a fleeting slurp at the fly, but I entirely missed him due to setting the fly too hard and too soon.

I soon learned from Matt that this technique requires waiting until the fish has turned it's head before setting the hook. A good 2 seconds - which felt like 2 minutes - of waiting is required after the fish has taken the fly before making the set. Otherwise, you will miss them almost every time. Not setting the hook when you see the swirl was actually one of the hardest things for me to do that night - talk about fighting your instincts!

But with renewed confidence that maybe we could actually catch a fish on our mouse patterns, we moved north around the inlet bay to some deeper waters. After missing a few fish, Matt finally landed a nice cuttie in the net. Even though the swirl-take was subtle, the fight after was plenty strong.


A fat 18 incher.

Yes that really is a mouse in the mouth.

Josh soon followed with a nice cutt of his own. Although it was on a streamer rather than a mouse, it was still a beautiful fish...especially since it was his first fish he ever caught on a streamer. Again, the HOW matters...

Josh was still sporting that lucky "Hope for Hegewald" wristband!

Nice work Joshie!

After missing 3 swirling fish, I finally landed my own cutt on the mouse pattern. I was surprised at how subtle the take was for such a large meal. Picture a fish slurping at a gnat on the water and you will get a sense of what it was like seeing him suck down the mouse.


Yes, I was shocked to catch this way.

I wish I was a mouse-eating trout sometimes.

All in all, it was one of my most memorable evenings ever for Mousing for Cutts. We didn't catch our limit, and we missed a bunch of slurp-takes. But it was totally worth it. So it was not a night of quantity fishing, but certainly one of quality fishing. I can see mousing for big predator fish on other lakes and streams already.

This one won't be crossed off the bucket list, but rather circled!

Fish on.

A gorgeous evening for Mousing.

Upper Mill B Majesty

I've been to the Three Sisters many times over the years. What are the Three Sisters, you ask? Lake Mary, Lake Martha, and Lake Catherine up beyond Brighton. No, these are the lesser set of the Three Sisters: Lake Blanche, Lake Lilian, and Lake Florence. These are three beautiful gems for alpine lakes located up the Mill B Drainage.

A few years ago, I scrambled around Lake Blanche and up The Sundial. At the top of that peak, I noticed some amazing views to the south and east. The Mill B Drainage continues onward and upward from Lake Blanche. I had always wanted to get back and explore this area for myself.

I'm grateful  Scott obliged me on this adventure for one of his Wasatch 100 Saturday morning training runs.It is a series of scree fields that gradually gets tighter and steeper until you suddenly find yourself on the ridge between Mill B and Cardiff Fork. A short scramble then takes you to the top of Mount Superior. We then decided to descent down through Cardiff Fork rather than navigate the loose scree in the upper reaches of Mill B.

Enjoy the photo essay below.

Wetzel pondering his next bite and his next mile

Upper Mill B

Blanche below

Superior above

Un-Named Lake of Upper Mill B

The panoramic view from Superior

Cardiff Mine

Wetzel and his newfound running friend on Cardiff Road...

Discovery: Soft Corn On The Pfeifferhorn

I have been hearing about the pleasure of corn skiing for over 5 years now. My back-country buddies and winter articles have told me corn skiing is nigh unto a heavier, slower form of powder skiing: soft, forgiving, exhilirating. (I'm not sure how anything could be better - or even close to better - than low density, deep powder in the Wasatch, but I try to keep the mind open...) I have never had the experience of skiing this type of snow myself. It is an elusive form of skiing where the chosen ski aspect, time of day, slope angle, and ambient weather conditions all have to come together to make the experience really count. I have tried to ski it in the past with different partners and mountains, but the true corn experience always escaped us for one reason or another.

For some very lucky reason, it all came together for me on the Pfeifferhorn on Friday, February 26. The aspect was southeast facing. The time of day was 10:38 am. The slope angle was approaching 52 degrees on the face of descent. And the ambient weather conditions could  not have been more ideal, with highs in the 50's and clear skies with utterly no wind, making for a gorgeous sunrise.

Sunburst over White Baldy as first light pushes back the night in Upper Red Pine Canyon

The southeast face, also referred to as The East Ramp, is usually wind swept and therefore an impenetrable slab. But with no winds and a bright sunny morning, the climbing was firm but not too bullet proof.

The Pfeiff, as seen from the wind-scoured Utah County side

The booter, and cliff band, was becoming more apparent at this point.

A boot-ee on the said boot-er...

Some pictures just don't do the terrain justice, especially I-Phone cameras. This type of winter summit climb was all new for me.  Think of the booter shown as some of the steepest stairs you'll ever climb without needing a harness and rope...


The snow began to soften finally

Into thin air...the last and steepest push

Jeff working it up





Jeff was a fellow skier I met on the up-trail who had also never summited the Pfeiff, despite a few attempts over the years. Just like me. So we tracked each other going up and down through some of the tricky sections. I was grateful to have met him honestly.

 

On the top, we met 4 other people. These were all young and restless, hard core mountaineering types. Two of them were focused on rappelling the Northwest Couloir and the other two were taking on the Northeast Couloir. I recall the Pfeiff always being such a remote and wild mountain, with no quick and easy approach.  I had never seen so many people up there, either in the winter or the summer.  So seeing these 4 impatient guys literally "wait in line" to do these high-consequence descents was a bit shocking actually. Is there nothing sacred left in the Wasatch any more?? It reminded me a bit of the climbers' "traffic jam" that tragically occurred on Mount Everest's Hillary Step back in the Spring of 1996 when the large climbing parties of both Rob Hall and Scott Fisher competed to get to the summit first. And many from both parties perished up there in that ill-fated attempt. Obviously, this was a much smaller, less risky target than The Great One, but the notion of an overcrowded summit became apparent to me at this time.

Side-stepping sheer ice to the NW Col rappel station below.

Lots of scratched tips and tails through here.

 While I currently have no desire to do something like the NW Col, that day may still arrive for me. Or not. Anyways, we took some pics on the summit instead, with gorgeous views in all directions on the compass.

Box Elder Peak and a thawing Utah Lake beyond.

South Thunder Mountain and Lone Peak beyond.

The whippet works...it turns out.

We finally left the pristine views and perfect weather from the summit and began heading down. We navigated the upper ramp nice and cautious. True corn is a really sweet form of snow. The best way I can describe it is a firm slurpee on top of a soft sponge. Can you feel that under foot? I can still now. And it certainly beats the bullet-proof ice sheets I am used to skiing on the steep stuff.

We then dropped into the main chute of the upper Maybird Headwall. Here the corn hadn't taken effect yet, due to the pure northern aspect of this famous headwall. But the sun was arriving.


Upper Maybird and Airplane Ridge

This chute skied beautifully and we opened up some bigger cruising turns towards the bottom of the slope. I then parted from Jeff and skied out some surprisingly fresh pow in perhaps my favorite line in Little Cottonwood which is the Upper Maybird Aprons.

What a great, long, clean line!

The black is not a Ghost Shade or your bad eyes, but rather bad photography. :( Still wanted to show the pow on the Aprons.



A picturesque Pfeiff from Maybird

Mission accomplished!

Pleasure and Pain in the Moonlight

There is something truly magical about the combination of a bright full moon, clear nights in the mountains, and fresh powder. Everything suddenly becomes bathed not in full color or even black and white, but rather silver and blue. It’s ethereal. I’ve always loved full moons ever since I was in junior high and full moons meant toilet papering the girls we had a crush on with my band of friends. Now I just like to run or fish or ski on those silvery, magical nights. But if you want to ski those full moons, you only really have 3 good opportunities to do so in the Heart of Winter:  January, February, March.  I’ve learned this by doing full moon ski tours for the last 4 years.

 Last night was my second to last chance at skiing one of these 3 precious winter full moons, and I didn’t want to risk waiting until March. There always is the risk that a full moon happens the night a blizzard rolls in, after all… And I didn’t want to ruin my tradition of missing my annual full-moon tour, something I had faithfully done for the last 4 years.

The kids’ heads finally hit the pillow at 9:16 pm. After prep and transport, I was finally skinning up Grizzly Gulch by 10:04 pm. The first thing I saw when arriving on the trail was way too many people on the same trail.  Night tours are supposed to be an unknown and unpopular way of skiing – or so I thought! I longed for some separation from the crowds to truly embrace the night.

That separation didn’t come until after arriving at Patsey Marley Peak. While most people stopped there to ski what was becoming the mogul field off Patseys, I gazed eastward toward my target of Mount Wolverine. I quickly worked my way around Wolverine Cirque to the peak.  The views from Mount Wolverine are breath-taking because you can see the glittering lights of Heber as well as you can see those from Salt Lake, not to mention both Brighton and Alta ski resorts. The snow cats at both places were out. I saw a few headlights of other skiers around the range taking advantage of the moon. The coolest by far was seeing 3 skiers boot up the dark fissure of Suicide Chute on Mount Superior under the moonlight. Meanwhile, my plan was to explore the terrain north and east of Mount Wolverine on the telemark skis with the 7” of fresh pow that hadn’t been sun-baked or wind-blasted yet.

It did not disappoint. The first run was through creamy powder in the wide open Tuscarora Bowl, right underneath the cliff bands of Mount Tuscarora. That craggy peak looked so ominous against the moon.  After arriving almost to the shores of Lake Martha, I skinned all the way back up to Mount Wolverine again.  

Still amped from my first run and wanting more, I decided to explore the northern terrain for the next lap. I skied the Wolverine Chutes and then on to the steep Mary Chutes, fanning out onto the shores of frozen Lake Mary. Sheltered and soft, quiet and untracked, the Mary Chutes skied so amazingly well that I just had to do them again. So I booted directly back up the gut of the main Mary Chute to ski them again for a mini 3^rd lap. It was as if I had those chutes all to myself in a total dark solitude. Constraints of time and fatigue were forgotten all together while relishing in my telemark turns in the moonlight.   

I then skinned from Lake Mary up to Mount Wolverine for a 3^rd and final view from the summit. My plan for the exit was to drop into the Wolverine Cirque, down Figure 8 Hill, up and out through Twin Lakes Pass and back down Grizzly. However, each chute I inspected from Wolverine Cirque was skied out and icy so I decided to abort this plan. By this time, my legs and eyelids were truly getting heavy -the fatigue was finally overpowering the adrenaline.

I finally decided to ski southwest, down into Alta, on a very steep, icy, and wind-blasted return run, all with quivering legs. Not the greatest finishing lap, but still worth it to explore that area. It was amazing to see how totally different my experience was on the east and north sides of the compass compared to that on the west and south sides of the compass.

Finally arriving back at the car, both exhausted and exhilarated, I checked the time again. 3:37 a.m. My promised 2-hour tour turned into a 5-hour tour. Ouch. The wife had called and texted me 4 times, with no reply from me. I immediately called her back to tell her I was safe and sound, to her great relief. And I’m glad I did because, by the sound of things, her next call was likely going to be Search and Rescue. :) My only stop from there was a celebratory cup of hot cocoa at the 7-11. I felt it was well-deserved after my 5-hour bout of Pleasure and Pain on Mount Wolverine.

p.s. I know, I know...blog entries are lame without pictures.  I tried to take some, believe me. But I have since learned that I don’t have the right camera for decent night time photos.  As compensation, please enjoy this GoPro video with some good tunes of me and my sister in the same area, but in the day light. Pictures may be worth a thousand words but videos are worth a million pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ijW8Ear-RA

Magical Mill A

The Day after Christmas with 18" fresh everywhere, Lingo and I set out to do a standard Circle Awl tour. After realizing that this tour is indeed far too "standard" now, with tracked out powder everywhere in the Aspens off the summit, we looked northward to Mill A. He had more time than I did and wanted to go longer and further, while I needed to get back. As the sun came out and the beauty of the day came to be, I realized I needed to join him as he explored the upper reaches of Mill A. It didn't take much convincing at all...

The plan was to get to the saddle and then possibly ski some aspect off Gobbler's.  But looking west from the saddle, I then became enamored with Mt Raymond. I knew we needed to ski some aspect of it at that time. The target was the northern shoulder shown here. All pics courtesy of John Curtis.

Drawn toward the ridge

The snow was still decent on the way up, surprising for a south-facing aspect with no shelter. Luckily we were early enough in the day that the wind and snow hadn't blasted the exposed face...yet.


So many options up here.



Approaching mighty Raymond

Lingo enjoying the rays and the scenery

 

We carefully scoped the ridge to finally found our entry point. No cornice break-outs were noticed, nor wind slabbing, nor propogations, or slumps.  So we felt good about the conditions we chose to be in.

Blue bird

The Exhausted-Exhilarated-Selfie, prior to the descent ...

Then it all came together with a beautiful drop-in off the ridge into some nice fluff, with Jimmy Hendrix providing audio. Make sure the audio is turned up to feel the true adrenaline. Mill A was a great belated Christmas Day gift indeed for both of us.  Next drop in up there  will hopefully be off the Raymond summit, if fate allows it...

 

Our Happy Trails...we will return....