Moments that Mattered: Winter 2018

As the calendar turns to June and the remaining snow melts away, it's time to take a look back on the season that was. This winter went down as the 2nd worst snow year in Utah history with Alta Guard failing to reach 300 inches for only the 2nd time in that station's 75 year history. No Snow November became Death Ridge December. The Wasatch spent the first 3 months in storm track purgatory, with big storms just to our north. South facing slopes were essentially dry to 11,000 ft as late as December 19. Snowbird infamously opened the day before Thanksgiving and closed for the season due to lack of snow on Black Friday. January wasn't much better, so I booked a flight to Kyrgyzstan on a whim. Despite the brutal first half of the season, things completely turned around February thru April. The Death Ridge finally broke down and big storms provided some of the best pow days I've had in Utah. Two rainstorms at the end of March/beginning of April healed the snowpack and opened up the big lines of the Wasatch. It ended up being the best Chuting Season I've had. The following photos tell the story of the season. It was a season of character building. Perfectly imperfect. Enjoy the ride! 01. Streaking in Wydaho October 24 marked mine and Tony Aadland's 24th consecutive month of snowboarding. The lack of snow in Utah forced us to go up to the Tetons for a couple awesome days of touring. We decided to celebrate the streak by popping champagne in the Targhee parking lot. Our champagne spraying skills are definitely not up to par. Hopefully when we celebrate year 3 of the streak we do a better job. 02. Skunked on Suicide Suicide Chute holds snow pretty well. On this morning, maybe a little too well. Hardly any snow on the Superior apron and lower part of the chute led to massive wind loading on the top quarter of the chute. We decided to turn around after not liking what our snowpit revealed. The riding in the lower part of the chute was still fun and navigating the apron was an adventure. Eventually we just rode our boards like little kids on toboggans, and acted like little kids on toboggans in the process. 03. Kyrgyzstan At the end of January I took the trip of a lifetime and went to Kyrgyzstan on a whim. Splitboarding in such a remote part of the globe was such a cool experience. I hope I make it back there someday. The full recap of that adventure is worth a read if you're bored and can be found here. 04. Fortunate to be Misfortunate My trip home from Kyrgyzstan became an adventure in itself. I awoke in Bishkek at 3 am to an email from Turkish Airlines informing me that my flight to Istanbul was delayed 6 hours. This meant I had already missed both of my connecting flights before even leaving my hotel room. My misfortune worked out because I got to spend the night in Istanbul and had just enough time for an early morning high speed tour via taxi before completing the journey home. 05. Morning Commute I've wanted to get this shot for a while. The problem is there's rarely enough snow down low to make it happen. Luckily we had our chance on a bitter cold morning in late February after a big dump in town. Shout out to Mike (pictured) for being willing to wake up at 4am to get this one set up before heading off to work that morning. This is one of my favorite photos from the season. 06. Where's Waldo... We were actually going for the Whipple. However, we thought we could link it up with the Waldo. That was a rather ambitious plan. The Waldo is called the Waldo because its damn near impossible to find and requires some of the most heinous bushwhacking you can imagine to get to it. We were pretty beat by the time we got to the top and pushing on to the Whipple would have been a fruitless endeavor. The Waldo was a blast to ride, though. And it made for a great story to tell. 07. Working on our Night Moves Another mission me and Mike have been on the last few seasons has been trying to get sunset pow turns. And we would fail every time prior to this shot. Usually we would end up riding some heinous death crust after dark making the shittiest turns of our lives while freezing our asses off. It all finally came together this season. I guess we're finally getting smart after many sessions of trial and error. 08. Harry and the Sendersons We had a lot of fun jumping off stuff during the 2nd half of the season. It was especially fun seeing Tony go full send again after breaking his back last season. I want to do more with photo sequences next season. This was one of the first ones I've done. 09. Dusk Patrol The days start to get pretty long here in April. We were hoping for a storm to come in and last all day then clear out in the evening so we could get some golden hour pow. Timing is everything for this to happen. If it clears too early the snow gets baked by the intense April sun. Too late and you don't get that perfect light. The stars aligned once more for me and Mike and we had one of our funnest runs of the season in an empty Wasangeles in cold smoke blower pow in that beautiful evening light. Perfection. 10. Homicide The best shot I've taken. This was the last legit pow day of the season. Dillon and I rode Homicide Chute in perfect conditions. Couldn't really ask for much more. Just another rad day in the mountains. 11. Forbidden Fruit Vol. I Gad 2 was closed for the season so touring above it was fair game. Tony and I have wanted to ride Liam's Pension for a while, but like all the other forbidden fruit chutes, it's very difficult to get. We finally crossed it off the hit list on Cinco de Mayo. 12. The Biggest Day of the Season 3 days after bagging Liam's Pension we crossed of the Champagne Couloir, another line high on our hit list. The whole day was unrelenting. I'm really glad we did it, though. That story is also worth a read if you haven't already read it. 13. Forbidden Fruit Vol. II Probably the most gawked at line in the Wasatch. Two years ago I got shut down on Pipeline. The ridge was sketchy and the snow was heating up. I decided to bail and had been waiting ever since for redemption. That finally came last week when Maxwell Morrill and I bagged this classic classic couloir. 14. Forbidden Fruit Vol. III Bookmark is always closed. It's such a beautiful looking line. We've probably mind surfed it a thousand times from the Mineral Basin chair. A couple days ago we took advantage of Snowbird being open for Waiver Season and checked off another classic line. I think we might need a new hit list after how much we got after it this Chuting Season. 15. Riding off into the Sunset No Chuting Season is complete without sunset laps on Baldy. It doesn't get dark till after 9 so you can start skinning after 6 and still have time to get to the top before it's dark. Mike and I did exactly that a few days back. It was also the last day you could ride top to bottom at Alta (the mid station melted out the next day). The snow was perfect corn for our ride down. There really isn't much left to accomplish this season. I'm sure we will still tour here and there, but for the most part I'm done. Now it's all about keeping the streak alive through summer. June is a lock. July, August, and September are going to be difficult. We're gonna have some great adventures to keep it going this year. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading! And thanks to everyone that agreed to come along on these adventures!