Downtown Tuesdays

For the last few seasons I have had a weekly ritual of a dawn patrol tour in the big city Central Wasatch just east of Salt Lake City. I live and spend most of my time in the northern Wasatch in sleepy Ogden situated just an hour north of Utah's capital city. In my younger days I frequented the Salt Lake Wasatch much more, but as I aged and fell comfortably into my place in the north country I kind of stopped making the one-hour commute down to the busy city. A few years ago I started scheduling a weekly meeting with the fellas down at Telemark Skier Magazine, which is headquartered on Salt Lake's west side. As a result, I began doing a weekly morning dawn patrol tour to make the most of my southern migration each week. I rallied a few friends and by now we have a nice little weekly tradition going. The early season this year had a late start, but has come in pretty heavy recently ramping up the avalanche concerns, but our short and small slope approach to our weekly dawn patrols has paid dividends in low angle sheltered ski turns with relatively low avalanche exposure. 

^Sunrise in the mountains is a special

Dropped Third Strike

I grew up with a baseball in my hand, and as such I carry a lot of classic baseball analogies with me in my life despite not having swung a bat in many years. This weekend's endeavors harbored a scenario that I would liken to a dropped third strike in baseball. I still struck out, but then I still got on base too.  I swung and missed, but the catcher dropped the ball opening the opportunity to advance to first base remaining in the game, and possibly still scoring arose.

All this baseball applies here as a metaphor in that I was scheduled to go down south to Fruita, Colorado to meet up with a bunch of my college buddies for a long weekend mountain biking trip. Due to a variety of factors the whole trip melted down at the very last minute. A real swing and miss. A full-on strike out, and all the disappointment that comes with it. The dropped third strike scenario comes into play in that one of those old college buddies had a friend of his, Brian, that was traveling to my area in northern Utah and was looking to ride an area just north of his destination in Orem called Corner Canyon, a little over and hour south of where I live in Ogden, Utah. Our mutual friend made the network connection between the two of us and the plan was on. I also have a ski buddy of mine, Lance, that lives right at the base of Corner Canyon. Lance and I have been trying to link up for a ride all summer, and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to put it all together to have Lance show me and a new friend around his backyard trail system. An opportunity to get on base and possibly still have the weekend result in a mountain biking score!  

August Fly By

It felt like the month of August flew by in a blink of an eye. Perhaps because of all the flying on airplanes that I did, but also perhaps due to the schedule that I put together to take advantage of some free time away from my night job. I lucked out to receive the entire month off from my Delta Air Lines night job, and I intended to make the best use of it that I could. First and foremost was a family vacation to the north woods of Wisconsin, followed by plenty of work on my properties, a mountain bike guiding certification course, and a reunion trip with some of my oldest friends. The time flew by in between all of the actual airline flights. 

^My family and I have been

Dirty Snow & Muddy Boots

Summer is yet a few weeks out on the calendar, but has arrived in weather to the Northern Wasatch Range. The gate for one of my favorite spring skiing zones, Farmington Canyon, took forever to get open this year and as a result I missed most of the good skiing conditions up there this spring. I was irritated at the delay from the U.S. Forrest Service to get the gate open, but once it finally did open up I decided that despite my irritation I might as well get up there to check out a few more spots I have wanted to ski. By the time I could get up there the snowpack had receded to full-on summer snowpack, which is good for avalanche concerns, but not all that great of skiing conditions.