TR: Terminal Cancer Couloir
Date: May 22, 2022
Location: Ruby Mountains, NV
Skiers: Enginerd & UCL
Photos: Enginerd & UCL
Synopsis: This is another super belated trip report, but I figured better late than never! In May 2022, the snow coverage in the Eastern Sierra in CA was basically non-existent, as we had a very bad snow season. As a result, Enginerd and I thought through alternatives for a week-long adventure and came up with a road trip from Tahoe to Utah, with the goal to mountain bike in Park City and then Moab.
Given the drive was across northern Nevada on I-80, we knew we'd drive right past the Ruby Mountains outside of Elko, NV – home of the super aesthetic line of Terminal Cancer Couloir.
We really couldn't find any beta on whether it had snow – aside from rough Google Earth imagery. But we just loaded up ski gear in the car together with all of our mountain biking gear and hit the road, figuring it was worth a shot.
When we first hit Elko around the nice alpine start of noon, things did not look promising. The Rubies seemed bone try, but we figured it was a short drive up the canyon to just take a look at the couloir given it was North facing, shaded and basically had zero approach so you could see it from the car.
Upon pulling over, we were treated to a surprise – there was snow!
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Of course we had no idea what the conditions would be like. It was fortunately not too hot out and pretty windy, so we weren't worried about the late start.
The river was running pretty high, so we spent a good bit of time trying to find a good place to cross. We finally did though.
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Then about 45 minutes of hiking up the talus and apron, including navigating around some water flows.
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The snow was surprisingly supportable at the base, so we started the boot up.
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Honestly throwing in the ski stuff in the car for what was intended to be a mountain bike road trip caused me to skip some stuff. I had no crampons for one (Enginerd did) and also forgot my climbing helmet. Hence – the bike helmet!
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As we worked up into the shaded parts, the snow got firmer. The bigger issue was there was a waterfall half way up on the wall that – because of the wind – was blowing water all over the snow surface. And it was getting colder and shaded, causing it to start to freeze like glass panes on the snow surface.
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Where Enginerd is at is when the snow starting getting kind of "glassy" on the surface.
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This is also the part I started to get concerned about (1) not having crampons (as I wasn't getting much beyond my boot toes in and (2) the snow getting even firmer cause of the refreeze. I shouted up to Enginerd I was just going to dig out a plateau there to put my skis on and ski the bottom half. Because Enginerd had crampons and a stronger sense of adventure, he was going to keep going up the top half to see if it softened (spoiler: it didn’t!).
Looking rad in a bike helmet ;).
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From where I stopped, there was still a nice long line of skiing below.
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Enginerd topped out and said it was super windy and super firm snow with variable surface conditions. He skied from the top and then we exited out the bottom together.
Here I'm looking up at Enginerd after stopping near the bottom – where there was good corn snow.
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Looking back up.
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Going down the last section.
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After a fun ski, it was time for the hike out and one last river crossing before heading to Park City and Moab for some unreal mountain biking.
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