I am not a fan of alarm clocks. That fact alone is pretty amazing, given the fact that my alarm clock is the mechanism to get me up to do my favorite summer time activity of trail running and my favorite winter time activity of back country skiing. These activities always occurs in the earliest hours for me, known as The Dawn Patrol in the winter and The Dawn Treader in the summer. Roles of father, husband, son, employee, construction manager, neighbor, all seem to increasingly get in the way of the role of skier as the day wears on. So I have to get up early enough to be a skier before the rest of the day catches up to me and asks (forces) me to be something else. Duty calls - relentlessly.
Question : as a skier, how can I avoid the dreaded alarm clock all together?
Answer: sleep in the mountains and let Mother Nature wake me up.
The objective would be to pack as light as possible to move as quickly as possible in order to survive a night in the Great White. In order for that to happen, I needed a light pack. I've seen back country skiers take gear sleds, huge frame packs, even pack dogs when winter camping. I wanted none of this extra gear or hassle. The first way to save weight would be to eliminate the tent and pad. That would mean building a lined snow cave instead of tenting. The second way would be to avoid bringing a lot of water. That would mean heating and purifying snow melt. The third way would be avoiding a lot of extra clothing. That would mean making sure I could build a fire wherever I went to keep what I had on warm and dry.
The destination would be Lake Catherine. I have camped there a few times in the summer over the years, so I knew the protected spots. I wanted to sleep as comfortably as I could and then skin from my base camp to Sunset Peak the next morning for a nice, north-facing, steep run back to the frozen shores of Catherine.
I left Grizzly Gulch parking lot at 6 pm. Immediately the winds and the flurries picked up, almost as if Nature was asking me one more time if this is what I really wanted to do. I answered by plodding on. Darkness soon fell.
 |
| Alta's snow cats doing their thing in the fading light. |
 |
| Cool pink hue of the valley over Superior at dusk, which this poor pic doesn't do justice for. Sorry. |
Arriving at Catherine Pass, the winds finally calmed down a bit. After descending down to the lake, I found this gem of a camp site in a grove of large pines.
 |
Doesn't look like much, but it was a welcome sight, believe me.
|
I admit it was a bit of a psychological shift for me to recognize that this place was where I would sleep, that there was no going home to a warm bed that night, that this is what Nature had provided me. So I just went to work digging out a snowy home.
 |
| Tree wells give a great head start when building a snow shelter. |
The snowpack was at least 7 feet deep at this location, and well consolidated. It made for a perfect snow room. I wanted to be able to sit up in my snow cave so as to prevent that claustrophobic feeling I got as a Scout trying to sleep in a snow cave I built with a roof only inches above my nose when laying down. So after a good hour and a half of digging, straining, grunting, smoothing, and sculpting, I came up with my own snow shelter for the night. The feeling of satisfaction soon left when I realized I was by now soaking wet, exhausted, and hungry, and the winds were picking up again. So I built a "cold fire" to partially warm me up. I call it a cold fire, as the coals kept melting the snow below it and sinking into the snow pack, causing a lot of smoke. But some fire is better than none, especially psychologically. I then changed into my dry socks and PJ's and retreated into my White House...
 |
| Inside, looking out |
I could not believe how warm it was in there! It was totally quiet, totally insulated, totally protected from the windy elements above. After some hot Ramen and letting my wife know I was safe and sound (much to her relief), I hit the sack.
 |
| Candles are surprisingly warm and bright in snow rooms... |
Now...I won't lie. I didn't sleep a full 8 hours. But I slept a solid 5 and I was pretty warm and dry. And best of all, I slept in until 8 am. Take that alarm clock! It was so cool to wake up to blue skies with mountains to climb and ski, right outside my White House. No rushing to meet fellow Dawn Patrollers, no forcing yourself awake, no stressful morning. Just a nice greeting from that powerful couple, Nature and Winter.
The winds were still howling from the south, so I decided to climb Mt. Tuscarora instead of Sunset Peak, hoping for a more protected aspect to descend over there.
 |
| Flat top summit of Tuscarora with Sunset Peak, Pioneer Peak, and Heber Valley beyond. |
From the summit, I skied down The Seagull in highly variable snow: ice, wind board, powder. So the skiing was not the best, but that was never the goal from this trip anyways. The goal was to comfortably survive a night in the mountains with minimal gear. I can say I accomplished that. It was a lot of work, but the reward was satisfying.
I would love to do the same adventure on a big powder day. So with that in mind... my White House still stands today, with a buried entrance whose location only I know about. Perhaps I will get mad at my alarm clock one day and try this again this season...especially now that all the work of building the thing is complete!
