Tourin' Tuesday: Beaver Mountain
Sunday night into Monday, the Bear River Range east of Logan, UT picked up about a foot of high density snow.
The Wasatch was mostly skunked from this system so if any turns were going to be made, the two hour trek from Salt Lake to Logan was going to have to be made.
Beaver Mountain Ski Area is a really ideal spot to earn turns when the snow is shallow and the lifts are not yet spinning. Most of the runs are very grassy and have very few obstacles (rocks, tree stumps, etc) making them rideable with very little snow.
The Beaver Mountain Ski Area owners also encourage people to earn their turns preseason, unlike many other resorts that prohibit uphill traffic this time of year. "The Beav" has been family owned and operated since 1939. It's a really cool ski hill and worth checking out.
Today we left my house in Salt Lake at 6am to make the 120 mile trip to The Beav. Certainly not a short drive, but well worth it.
I decided to ride the split today. I figured there would be enough snow to make skinning up possible.
Coverage at the bottom was pretty thin, only about 4 inches. It was very high in water content, though, so it set up nicely overnight with the temperature in the low 20s. Up high, there was about 12 inches of settled powder. Very good base building snow.
Some small surface hoar crystals formed overnight last night. The snow on north facing aspects will most likely stick around and could eventually become problematic in the form of a persistent weak layer in the snowpack up in the Bear River Range. We will have to wait and see on that one.
The ride down was a lot of fun. It's hard to beat making pow slashes in mid October!
Today also brought my consecutive month streak up to 12. A full year straight of snowboarding! Just another successful Tourin' Tuesday in Utah!
The Beaver Mountain Ski Area owners also encourage people to earn their turns preseason, unlike many other resorts that prohibit uphill traffic this time of year. "The Beav" has been family owned and operated since 1939. It's a really cool ski hill and worth checking out.
Today we left my house in Salt Lake at 6am to make the 120 mile trip to The Beav. Certainly not a short drive, but well worth it.
I decided to ride the split today. I figured there would be enough snow to make skinning up possible.
Coverage at the bottom was pretty thin, only about 4 inches. It was very high in water content, though, so it set up nicely overnight with the temperature in the low 20s. Up high, there was about 12 inches of settled powder. Very good base building snow.
Some small surface hoar crystals formed overnight last night. The snow on north facing aspects will most likely stick around and could eventually become problematic in the form of a persistent weak layer in the snowpack up in the Bear River Range. We will have to wait and see on that one.
The ride down was a lot of fun. It's hard to beat making pow slashes in mid October!
Today also brought my consecutive month streak up to 12. A full year straight of snowboarding! Just another successful Tourin' Tuesday in Utah!