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