Growing up with Jason he was always into monkeys. He always acted like a small monkey and even had a Curious George stuffed animal that he LOVED until I ripped its arms off. What a cruel older brother eh? Well, I went skiing with the monkey again on Friday and unable to resist the rumor of deep October powder to the north, we headed up to Snow Basin. Our goal for the morning was to find some actual snow to ski rather than the snirty rocks that we found a couple days previous at Alta. A secondary goal was to summit Mount Ogden and ski its namesake chute, which we enjoyed during a June outing a couple years ago.
Heading up a nice skin track that must have been laid down earlier that morning, we avoided breaking trail through 3 feet of unconsolidated powder. Just under the summit ridge, the trail took a detour to some boring bump so we put in a track to the summit of Allen Peak (elevation 9645), which lies immediately to the north of Mount Ogden. Here, we realized that we were standing near the entrance of the elusive Banana Couloir. This is where the monkey showed his true colors and chose the Banana over the warm sunny powder slopes to the east. No matter that lurking shark fins and bushes were always a concern. The boy devoured the Banana before we turned around and skinned our way back to the sun.
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| Heading up and out of Snow Basin |
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| Nearing the summit of Allen Peak |
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| The monkey looking for his banana |
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| Ahhhhh, the Banana Couloir |
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| More Banana-rama |
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| Heading home |
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| Mount Ogden and the other peaks of Snow Basin |
Now that the sun has again reared its ugly face and won't go away for what looks like the foreseeable future, this trip north seems like a distant dream. Did we just ski deep cold powder in October?
Nice work boys. We where skiing in Malans Basin that day thinking we had the place to our selves. Guess not to crazy monkeys to the north of us.
ReplyDeleteGreat post as always Andy. What kind of softshell pants are those grey ones that you're wearing?
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