Oingo Boingo - Hallway - Lawnmower

A good rule of thumb if you're into backcountry skiing: if a friend offers to drop a car in one canyon and meet you in another, accept the offer. The likely result is a good day of skiing. Daren, Tanner, Aaron, Tim, and I started in Little Cottonwood by skiing Oingo Boingo chute into Days Fork. The wind was blowing, so some good sized cornices had formed.

After cutting one of them to check stability, Tanner dropped in.

We left some evidence that we had been there.

I heard that Superior was also pretty good.

From the top of Days, we entered the Hallway couloir, the first time I'd skied it. Aaron missed the entrance and ended up snaking through a narrow band of rocks I dubbed the crawlspace. The nice thing about having touring gear is if you start one direction and there's no way down, you can always go back up. Fortunately, he made it through.

From there we skied down Cardiff Fork (a.k.a. Mill D South) to the base of Kessler. Up Kessler and down God's Lawnmower. We were not the first to have that idea, so there were a few tracks, but I didn't hear any complaints.

 

 

Hero of the day was Tim. After we got done with the lawnmower, he decided to skin back up Cardiff and over the ridge to Little Cottonwood where his truck was parked. The rest of us gladly called it a day and drove home.

All the photos are courtesy of Daren, who often jokes that he has friends who blog so he doesn't have to. Since he got his new camera, though, he takes pictures so I don't have to.