Peanut Butter and Jelly. Hot Apple Pie and Cold Vanilla Ice Cream. Fireworks and The Fourth. Some things are just meant to go together in life. Like two peas in a pod, these things seem to compliment each other, creating an experience that is greater than the sum of it's parts - also known as synergy. Let's try another one...
Powder and Trout.
Huh?
Yes you heard me correctly - Powder and Trout. At first blush, these two items don't exactly go together like yin and yang. But Brent and I, a.k.a. Green and Heg, decided we would make our own rules of what a creative adventure really means by combining our two favorite passions into one mega-activity. And the logistics, training, and researching quickly turned this "activity" turn into a "project."
Behold the birth of Project Pow-Trout!
It all started 4 years ago when Green posed a powerful question to himself, and then to me (realizing I was the only one in his Contacts list that was foolish/fit enough to consider this kind of trip "fun") - "what if we could fish a remote river at a time of year when no one else had access to the river ensuring the fish were wild and hungry, by back-country skiing into the river at the end of Winter with all our gear and supplies on our backs from a distant take-off point?" He ran the concept by me and I admit I was intrigued right away. I've skied the backcountry for 15 years and done seemingly hundreds of standard dawn patrol ski trips in the world-famous Utah powder. I've also fly fished for 30 years and done too many day trips to count on rivers of all shapes and sizes all over the state. But never have I thought to combine these two passions together into a single continuous trip that was entirely self-powered and self-supported - until now. Thanks for sharing your vision with me Green!
Like any good fisherman and powder skier, I will keep the actual location of my favorite streams and stashes, respectively, very secret. Even if I tell you the name and post the map of our route (which I was tempted to do at the first draft of this write-up) this is a remote enough place and therefore a tough enough trip that I am not worried about this spot (either the trout or the powder) getting spoiled by other people. After all, this is the first time this has ever been done to our knowledge - who else would be crazy enough to attempt this crazy adventure anyways? So while some of the listed areas on the map use accurate names, the name of the actual river won't be revealed here. But I'm happy to share my nickname for it that it has earned over the years - The Sacred Waters. It's quiet, beautiful, remote, and rugged - all the things that make a piece of wilderness sacred to me. This river fits what Green calls "The Model of the 3 C's": water that is very cold, very clear, and flows very consistently should always hold trout. What The 3 C's really translates into is that together we've caught some particularly big fish on this particularly small stream over the last decade.
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| Some big bows lurk in the Sacred Waters... |
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| ...and Green couldn't agree more |
THE ROUTE
The plan was to ski into the Sacred Waters right as Winter was turning to Spring, fly fish on that river for hungry trout, and then turn around and trace our steps as we ski back out. The take-off point would be Strawberry Bay Marina turn-off at the dead-end point of the access road, where wintertime maintenance usually ends and snowmobiling usually begins. The ascent would be to skin and ski up to the high point on Strawberry Ridge via a gentle climb past quaint cabins and through perfectly placed aspens. Once on the high point known as Portal Peak, the next phase would be a descent while staying true to a ridge all the way to the headwaters of the Sacred Waters, which essentially emerges out of the side of the mountain.
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| Our vehicles were ready to roll. |
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| While we were trying to wake up. |
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| Sunrise near Strawberry Bay Marina. |
Everything needed to line up for this trip to be a full success - the weather, the snow conditions, the water conditions, the gear, the nutrition, the transition of seasons, the fitness. Let's see if it really did...
THE POW
We had visions of skiing powder of some sort - cream, blower, chalk, graupel, you name it, as long as it was low density and fluffy. Unfortunately, we had none of it. During the first ascent, the snow was a hard freeze crust from the night before. Occasionally we would punch through the top freeze crust to a lower crust, which was very laborious to get out of. On top of the ridge, where the wind had clearly had it's way for the past few days, the crust gave way to a rippled wind board layer. During the first descent, the snow was still a very hard crust, without a spec of powder to be found on any aspect. Moreover, the snow was surprisingly thin to non-existent on all south facing slopes. During the second ascent, the snow had softened considerably, as it was now in the mid 50's. This manky and heavy snow made skinning tough, as evidenced by the fact that we were now sweating profusely. And during the second descent - the final phase back to the parked car - the snow was veritable mashed potatoes. In fact the snow was sticking to our skis and constantly braking our precious speed, not accelerating it like it was supposed to. Periodic bushwhacking was unavoidable. Turning was nearly impossible. So we just pointed them straight down in an effort to try and keep our momentum. To state the obvious...this was not the powder skiing we were hoping for.
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| Perfect weather for climbing through the Aspens. |
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| Approaching Portal Peak, fishing gear on back. |
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| Some nasty windboard on the frozen tundra of Strawberry Ridge. |
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| Manky snow. |
So we just adjusted our mindset from powder skiing to travel skiing. In other words, this was utilitarian skiing, not recreational skiing. This paradigm shift was actually not as miserable as it sounds. In the past couple of centuries, I imagine our cold-climate, extreme northern latitude ancestors undoubtedly used skis to travel across remote and icy expanses to do all sorts of functional transit like going to school, going to work, going to church, going to get groceries, and a host of other normal "errands." They certainly weren't worried about getting face shots while taking their kids to day care on skis in those days. I thought about this and tried to then put myself in their shoes, or... in their ski boots. Our skiing phases ultimately just became a means to an amazing end, which was fly fishing on a pretty special river. That mindset shift kept my spirits high.
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| Green taking the beauty during the first descent down the ridge. |
Our descent plan of staying true to the westward sub-ridge off the main Strawberry Ridge did not at all fail us. It was fun picking out skiable sections on or near the ridge, straddling it from the north side to the south side of the spine as we descended. It was a dynamic optimization problem of finding the best snow, with the most open terrain, with the safest descent, with the line closest to the ridge so as to not lose precious elevation. After probably a dozen map checks to make sure that optimization problem was succeeding, we knew we were close - we had been here before and we could just feel the Sacred Waters approaching by the very surroundings. We felt that we just had to eventually intersect the river if we stayed true to our plan.
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| Some "adventure skinning" and bushwhacking for sure. |
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| Our first view of the Sacred Waters from skis! |
THE TROUT
Hearing the distant roaring of the waterfalls get steadily louder with each downward ski turn directly translated into a growing excitement for actually wanting to see the Sacred Waters. We skied through a final open clearing to a small bluff overlook and gazed downward - and there it was. We both hollered with excitement as we realized we had found our destination of this unbelievable stream - on skis in Winter! The water looked perfect as it always did - crystal clear flows, ice cold water, with stately waterfalls, and, best of all, not a single sign of human life - not even a footprint - on the snow pillows that guarded access to the river's edges. It is already a gorgeous river, but we both agreed that in the winter the Sacred Waters take on a whole new degree of untarnished beauty. Finding a flat place to transition out of ski gear and into fishing gear, we gobbled down some lunch. We then found a good place to cross the river, keeping the water knee-deep or less. It certainly took a few moments for me to switch the muscle set from carrying a 25 lb pack on skis to walking on slippery moss-rocks in a river with a fly rod in hand. After 15 minutes of no luck while chucking streamers into the deep and blue runs, we decided to switch over to nymphs. That turned out to be a wise decision - Green was the first to get a fish into the snowy bank, with an 8" brown trout.
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| Transitioning from ski gear to fishing gear |
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| A beautiful picture of a nice brownie - trip mission accomplished. |
He then caught 2 more small cutthroat on the same pattern. He pulled in a couple of nice cutthroat on this same nymph pattern a few minutes later. I switched over to what he confirmed was now working, and I soon caught a few myself. We were both shocked at how fast the fishing truly was once we had found the right fly and figured out what a strike felt like for these fish at this time of year (hint - they were almost imperceptible!). All in all Green caught 8 and I caught 3, with probably 5 more between the two of us that were "long-distance releases." I know what you're now going to ask - what nymph was working? Again, I will keep that secret to myself, just to keep the Sacred Waters a bit more sacred. I'll just say that looking under the rocks always gives the fisherman the best clues; let Mother Nature tell you what they are eating.
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| The essence of the trip: pow and trout |
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| Green with a small cuttie. |
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| Me with a small cuttie. |
THE THEORIES
Fishing of any sort is always based on developing theories and then testing them. I love the art and science and "gut feel" of this sport! What will the fish be eating? There's a theory for that. Where will the fish be holding in the river? There's a theory for that. What is the right time of the year to fish? Yes, there's a theory for that as well. And the list of theories goes on. As we've been discussing this trip for 3 years, we've both had more than enough time to develop the theories that we wanted to test out and hopefully prove.
We thought the fish would be hungry, especially for stoneflies and streamers - correct, sort of; they were actually hungry after a long winter of no real insect hatches, but it did take some time to figure out what they were eating (hint - it wasn't stoneflies or streamers); on this river the fish make you "earn it" in so many ways.
We thought the fish would act wild - incorrect; the fish were incredibly lethargic and subtle in both their strikes and their fights, as to them the season was more like the heart of Winter rather than it was the emergence of Spring; the air temps were warm, but the water temps were frigid.
We thought the skiing and fishing crowds would be zero - correct; we didn't see another soul the entire day, even back on Strawberry Reservoir.
We thought we would find powder a few days after the last storm - incorrect; we were totally wrong on the snow quality, and the only way we would have been right would have been to go 1 week earlier right after (or even during) the most recent of these wonderful March snow storms.
And most importantly...
We thought we could successfully ski, fish, and ski all on the same trip - correct; we did it! You better believe we did it.
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| Halfway to the river, descending west from Strawberry Ridge. |
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| The final transition back to the car after a 10 hour day on our feet. |
THE STATS
There are some who only believe a trip happened if the data is recorded and shared - especially an ambitious one like Project Pow Trout. So to memorialize this trip for posterity and make it real for the skeptics here you go:
- Distance Traveled: 12.3 miles
- Total Elevation: 3300'
- Elapsed Time: ~11 hours, 7 minutes
- Average Heart Rate: 122 BPM
- Energy Burned: 2962 calories
THE LAST CAST
Driving down Daniels Canyon, recounting and reliving the amazing events of the day, we casted our mind throughout all we experienced that we had weaved together over the past 11 hours. As we enjoyed our obligatory "gut bomb celebration meal" of burgers, shakes, and onion rings back at Granny's Diner in Heber, UT, we pondered a final question that was probably pre-mature: would we do this exact same trip again? (Pre-mature because you never ask a person to run a marathon tomorrow right after they finished running a marathon today, just like you never ask your wife if she wants to have baby #2 just as she's leaving the hospital with baby #1 in her arms.) After some thought, we both admitted that this was an epic adventure in so many ways, and that we would love to come back again when the snow was better and the fish were more active for the exact same experience. The majority of our theories were proven true, after all. But given all the things that could have gone wrong on this kind of trip, surprisingly few of them did. So, the gratitude exceeded the regret. The reward was worth the work. The memories were worth the discomfort. The adrenaline was worth the sweat. And the time in the outdoors with a good fishing and skiing friend made it all worth it. Everything did not line up perfectly for us as we hoped, but it lined up enough to make it the best of both worlds. Next time we just need better snow...
So now the only question remaining is...when are we going to do Project Pow-Trout Part II again?
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| Fly fishing the Sacred Waters in Winter, accessed via backcountry skis was The Best of Both Worlds |
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