18 Attachment(s)
TR – Desert corn, NV/UT 2019 harvest
Warning: this TR features lots of pictures and even more words - read at your own peril!
The 2018-2019 winter will go down as one of best in recent memory for us Utards. Storms rolling in like clockwork starting late November, great low elevation snowpack, no persistent instabilities, all the ingredients for more great ski days than Brigham Young had wives... Literally EVERYTHING in the range was in. Classic lines went down in deep pow, sketchy lines turned into milk runs, terrifying lines became almost manageable, and dumb lines of the take-your-skis-on-a-multi-pitch-rappel-adventure variety turned out to only require a couple of 60m ropes…
There is a major problem when the Wasatch is this good though: it’s nearly impossible to leave. I usually make it a point to get out of the pen a few times a year to ski some novelty lines but so far this season had failed miserably with only 4 days outside of the central 'Satch.
I finally ran out of local dumb ideas in mid-April after putting a bigger dent in my to-do list than in the last 5 years combined. To celebrate the occasion I decided to partially tear my hamstring skiing mashed potatoes. Perfect timing! I needed a few days off anyway, some time to rest, do yard work, actually go to work (ew), and come up with an objective more than 20 minutes away from the house. Fast forward two weeks and my hami still felt tender. It was getting warm as hell and I couldn’t spend any more time drawing lines on CalTopo while muttering about the unfairness of life. My dear wife informed me that she’d had it with my constant weeping and gnashing of teeth and that if I didn’t GTFO of town for a while I would be at risk of a much more serious injury (at her hand).
Not wanting to find out if she was serious (she usually is) I packed the truck and headed out. The plan was to drive to the Snake Range in Nevada (Great Basin NP), ski Wheeler Peak and Doso Doyabi (or White Moutain, the soon-to-be official Shoshone name of Jeff Davis Peak), then get back into Utah and the Deep Creek Range to ski Ibapah Peak and Red Mountain. Both ranges are small and very isolated with huge prominence over the surrounding desert (7500’ for Wheeler). The lines on each peak hold snow well into the spring and are very visible when driving around the West Desert. I’ve been drooling over them for years. There are also a bunch of hot springs in the area and the beer drinking potential is limitless. I couldn’t round up a partner (everyone was busy doing their own dumb stuff) which meant the threshold for bailing would be low as fucking up out there would be high-consequence.
I took a SPOT device with me to keep my better half informed of my whereabouts and headed West into the sunset, or as the case may be got stuck in SLC rush-hour traffic in a downpour:
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After 3 hours I was finally off-pavement and heading toward better weather. The Deep Creek Range in the distance:
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Local wildlife with the mighty House Range in the background, big old Notch Peak on the far right:
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Hot spring #1 turned out to be an infernally hot and very shallow seep choke-full of reeds. Also, it’s definitely haunted:
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The next 2 springs were similar, shallow seeps infested with reeds. Can’t really tell from the satellite pictures which make them look like actual pools. Oh well, it made for some scenic driving as Wheeler slowly came into view:
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Oooooooooooohhh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!
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With all the wandering around on dirt roads I got into NV later than I wanted and had to pass on the entertainment offered at the Border Inn, a quality gas station/casino/motel establishment sitting 20’ across the border. Gotta lure those West Desert Mormons into this backwater Sin City somehow… I headed straight into the park and to the upper campsite at 7700’ where a number of campers were freezing their asses off already and happily running their generators. I read that Baker (the closest “town”) is a hub for star gazers as it has some of the darkest skies in the country. Up in the park with no moon it was shockingly dark but the constant hum of the petrotainment machines was hard to get away from. I eventually moved a “road closed” sign and drove a bit further in the campground to find some quiet by the creek. The forecast was for a decent refreeze but I had a S face climb planned for later in the day and didn’t want to risk getting there late. Up at 4:45 for breakfast:
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And on the trail by 5:30, a bit late as that amount of food takes some time to get through. After 1.5 miles on dirt the snow became consistent around 8900’. I stashed my shoes in a tree and started skinning. About 15 minutes later I caught the sunrise:
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And my first glimpse of Wheeler Peak:
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I wandered a bit too far to the E while skinning in the dark and had to traverse across a couple of gigantic glacial cirques. Lots of couloirs to gape at:
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No matter how many times I remind myself that it’s really hard to gauge the size of a shot from the bottom I always get tricked. This gully looked short and pleasant but turned out to be a continuous 1600’ slog to the peak's shoulder:
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The ridge itself was super windy and scoured with a nice mix of exposed rocks and sastrugi. Ski crampons worked for a while but I eventually switched to booting instead of insisting with the one-step-forward-slide-two-steps-back method. I threw a hissy fit when I noticed some asshole had borrowed my crampons and adjusted them for their midget boots without telling me. After freezing my fingers getting the adjustment screw off with the buckle of a Voile strap I realized the asshole also had the audacity to paint the crampons green and switch the brand from Petzl to CAMP. That made them look suspiciously like my wife’s crampons. Hum… People these days, hiding their crampons in your gear box correctly assuming you won’t check before tossing them in your pack. Anyway, I’m not adjusting them back so next time she uses them she’ll throw a fit and I'll have to adjust them on the fly again. Always punish yourself twice for your mistakes is a moto of mine.
More ridge walking with more mystery ranges in the background:
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The summit is a wide and flat section of ridge with a subtle bump at 13,064’. That's 3982m for those of us who were raised in the metric system, frustratingly close to being 4000m (the threshold for badassness). Guess I'll have to drive to CA or CO for these. Anyway, I walked to the E end where things drop precipitously into the main cirque. Doso Doyabi, the next objective, is the main pyramid in the foreground. The tiny snow cone center-left in the pic is in the Deep Creek range, tomorrow's problem:
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I didn’t want to get blown into UT and walked back past the non-descript summit and to the top of S face which sits at the head of another massive glacial cirque. Baker Peak is the badass craggy summit in the foreground. The beautiful pyramid to its left is, you guessed it, Pyramid Peak (with False Pyramid next to it because when you find a good name you stick with it). The small range on the far right is probably the Montezuma Range but there are so many in Nevada it’s hard to tell.
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Anyway, the S face looked about ripe so I dropped in right off the summit. The upper 300’ were a bit firm (SW exposure) and funneled into a steep rollover walled by towers of decaying quartzite. I worked over skier’s right to get into the SE aspect which had softened nicely:
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From there it was 1900’ of perfect corn between wet slide debris. I started a bit tentatively waiting for my hamstring to explode but after 5 turns forgot all about it and started the super-G turns. Between the snow quality and the surroundings I’m surprised I didn’t cream my pants…
I ate a bite in the cirque (the French cheese I brought tasted better than ever, sure wish I could have washed it down with a good beer but those 90 extra grams from the crampons made it impossible) and started the 2k slog back to the ridge between Wheeler and Doso Doyabi. The sun was blazing but the wind kept things from heating up too much, couldn’t get pinwheels to go even when throwing snowballs in the slope. The views were very distracting, the ramp-in-the-sky feature is the middle of cliff is just asking for it:
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TR – Desert corn, NV/UT 2019 harvest
Thx for the write up — it doesn’t have to be exotic to be a proper adventure