Day two of our adventure started with opening the RV door to 12-14 inches of fresh powder and an overlook of the Utah desert at sunrise. So far so good.
 |
| Sunrise over the UT desert...hard to believe Im standing in over a foot of fresh snow |
 |
| Parked at the trailhead on Geyser Pass Rd |
Three snowmobiles passed on the road when we were getting ready to leave – thanks for cutting a skin track for us guys! We skinned up the road to what looked like the best point to turn toward Mt Tukuhnikivatz and Mt Peale.
 |
| Getting ready to skin up the snowed in road |
 |
| Off we go... |
We spotted a lower lying slope in the Laurel Highway area that looked like it could give us a good vert without posing an avalanche danger. Time to cut our own skin track.
 |
| You can see our planned route behind Brian |
This proved to be a good choice – making turns in shin deep powder. We ended up doing two laps on this slope before skiing the rest of the way back to the RV (some in aspen glades, some on the road).
Rich carving up the powder with his split board
A grader came through between laps and cleared the road - Rich came close to getting run over on the grader's second pass. Maybe we can get the RV out without too much effort!
 |
| Rich surfing his board after he and Sean both smacked trees right next to each other |
We got back to our rig mid afternoon and decided to head toward our main objective – the Tushar mountains outside Beaver, UT. We packed up our stuff and started work on getting the RV out. At this point we had dug out all snow around the tires and the stupid thing was spinning on bare ground – impressive capabilities. We finally popped it out after rocking the transmission between drive and reverse until I thought it was going to fall out on the road. Off to the Tushars…warm and sunny in the valley…open beers now.
 |
| Driving back up 191 from Moab to I-70 |
We drove to the San Rafel swell along I-70 and drove north on a dirt road out of sight of the highway to camp for the night. Sean grilled NY strips and baked potatoes…we’re not exactly roughing it.
La Sal Mtns - Laurel Highway Area
Getting there: Drive south out of Moab, UT on 191, turn left at sign for Ken's Lake and La Sal Mountain Loop Road. This road turns into Geyser Pass Road, stay on Geyser at all junctions and park at the trailhead parking lot on the right side of the road (approx 9,600ft).
Route: From here, we skinned about a mile up the road because it hadnt been plowed out yet after last night's storm. It was difficult to tell where exactly we were in the Laurel Highway area because there were still a lot of low lying clouds on the mountains. There are a number of options in and out of the trees close to the road if you dont want to do a long skin.
Precautions:
Same as the precautions I've listed before - backcountry skiing requires avalanche gear and training. Checkout http://utahavalanchecenter.org/ for local avalanche forecasts and other information.
No comments:
Post a Comment