Saturday, January 12, 2008

Low Effort

According to my trainingpeaks.com workout, today was "my choice for mode of excerise, low effort easy breathing". Perfect! Given the choice, I decided to head into the backcountry.

Rachelle, me, Kim & Dug, Ben & Eliana met for a tour up AF Canyon. Only this time we cheated after all, today was a "low effort" day.



Yep, we used a couple of snowmobiles to get us deep into the area between AF Canyon and Little Cottonwood Canyon. With only 2 sleds for 6 people, it meant a few of us would tow in via a rope behind the sleds. It worked out great and we were able to eliminate the long approach to the good stuff. After snowmobiling in a few miles, we ditched the sleds at the bottom of a good pitch and skinned up from there.

The temps were warm, the sun was out, and there was plenty of fresh powder to be had (not to mention some of the most amazing views in the Wasatch).

The girls tore it up and put down some nice turns while Ben, Dug and I opted for less turns. The snow was creamy and we had the entire mountains to ourselves. An epic day (despite a breif period of a lost ski which was eventually found). I can't think of a better way to spend the day in the winter.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

We had an epic day in the Boise mountains on Saturday, with light, knee-deep powder, bluebird skies, and amazing views of the Sawtooth range. And yet somehow I am still jealous of your adventure in the Wasatch. How is that?

Oh, right, you had sleds to drag you through the boring part. Instead of riding/towing behind a sled, we had to boot pack up the road to the parking lot. That and the area between Little Cottonwood and AF Canyons is one of the prettiest places in the world, to say nothing of the snow.

Rick Sunderlage said...

Mark- I admit, using the sleds to wipe out an hour of skinning was very nice but you got a better work out than I did. And the Sawtooth range is spectacular as well. So many places to explore but not enough time to do it.