6" is not quite #RomanianDumpage

The latest quick hitting storm appeared to have deposited 5-6" of fresh in the cottonwoods. Accordingly, the utah transplants went out for a quick Saturday tour. We chose to get into banana days from the big cottonwood side.

A brief stop over for a beacon search.

A view looking up. #nofilters.

The struggle near the ridgeline. 

Utah Transplants make the ridgeline.

The 6" or so provided some low density fluff to cover the rocks below. Upon descent, we found most of them. Undeterred, we finished the run then skied out back down the skin track. Job well done.

Triple Traverse

 In September - Cole asked me to attempt the WURL - Wasatch Ultimate Ridge Linkup

http://jasondorais.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-wurl.html

Cole in Stairs Gulch during a WURL preparation scramble

I did not want to do the WURL for the obvious reasons- but settled on a compromise. We would instead turn the ~25 miles of ridge hiking into a 2-day adventure broken up by a stay at one of Snowbird's lodges. We would also cut out the section of ridge from Cardiff Pass to the Tram. We would call this the WSWURL "Weak Sauce WURL". Needless to say we completed about 30% of the WSWURL - and have a long way to go to complete the WURL in its entirety.

Cole - Twin Peaks looking into LCC

To get myself ready - I started doing non-sensical things - like running at Liberty Park in the dark before work, a 5k followed by a day of DH biking, scrambling rock faces, climbing mountains. I even bought a pair of shoes that were billed for walking around on rocks!

Me - Twin Peaks with the city in the background

 Needless to say - I left a lot of good fall biking on the table.

We made it up Twin Peaks quickly and were moving fast towards Sunrise. All the training was paying off. However, it was not the fitness that ultimately had me worried - it was the scrambling.

Sunrise Peak

 There were two sections of the BCC ridge that had me concerned. The first was the section heading up Sunrise and the next was Monte Cristo. This concern was the reason I sought out several rock scrambling adventures prior.

Pano

However, what ultimately got me was the extended section of ridge line from the top of Tanner's slide path to the Little Pine Couloir. This section was slightly downhill for a sustained distance and knife edge. The fact that we spent much of this section not going up made it very difficult.

Tanner's Slide Path to LCC road

I was mentally exhausted when we reached the Little Pine Couloir -  and not feeling up for an attempt on the Monte Cristo section. We decided to bail towards BCC and Lake Blanche.

Time to bail

 Once I get a chance to do the Monte Cristo section I can confirm, but bailing was likely more difficult than continuing. ~3 hours later we made it down several cliff bands to Lake Blanche.

Somewhere above Lake Blanche

Lake Blanche is awesome.

Room of Doom

The team (-) Cole went out for a early Saturday morning ski in the "Room of Doom". Cole was in St. George racing single speeds. He finished 1st place in the single speed division on the JEM area trails riding 80.1 miles in 5h 53m.

Brian topping out on the ridge and still doing incredibly well on his knee recovery.

(Above) "Room of Doom" - what a cool name. The ramp that bootlegs lookers right in the left photo upper left corner was our descent.

Views from the top.

Our tracks seen from below.

The snow was mash potatoes on the way out after the first day of warming since the midweek storm. A quick 0.5 mile hike in ski boots back to the road and across the creek.