Misadventures

Misadventure (noun): an instance of misfortune; a mishap.

These seem to happen to me a lot when, what John Muir would call "poking around the forest". Whether looking for a climbing area or now, finding pow lines in the backcountry - it happens even more so. Unlike [sport] climbing, backcountry snowboarding you go where you want, where your mind and body believes it can handle the risk. So there are no barriers and not much advice other than, "Don't get caught in an avalanche."

The last mishap I had was with a new touring buddy and the plan was to skin up White Pine and traverse over to Maybird Gulch in Little Cottonwood to meet up with the group from the Wasatch Splitfest. What happened though was a slight miscalculation. Taking a short cut lead to 3 hours, losing about 500 ft of elevation after skinning it, being out of water but wait we found the hut that you know is on the way to Maybird! Only problem is, we were still about 1000 ft to the summit. On a high note, we heard voices behind us and decided to hunker down for a bit as we assumed it was the group, and wouldn't you guess, it was!


After meeting up with the group we trekked up the last 1000 ft making our tour a full 4 hours long. Pretty tired, breaking trail, and pushing through 55mph winds we finally make it to the drop zone. I was just stoked to be able to switch my setup to ride mode finally and hit what looked like deep powder.

The group about to drop in.

SPOILER ALERT: it didn't disappoint.

We cruised through the first section weaving through trees and natural kickers, all through knee deep powder. Leading into the Maybird Gully, I had forgotten what I was complaining about to myself, then we hit the gully and my mind went completely blank. Waist deep powder; need I say more? If Jesus snowboarded he would of been impressed.

Not caring how the rest of the day would go, we boot packed out, jumped a river, and almost got lost finding our way back to Little Cottonwood Canyon road. The day was great, yes a misadventure, but it was the best pow day I have had all season so far. I'll take a misadventure any day if it leads to that type of shred day.

It's funny, maybe not so "haha" funny but you know, how you can make such a big mistake and yet everything turns around to be a great day in the outdoors.

Other photos from the day:

Where the hell are we going?

The skin track was deep, mainly cause it didn't exist.

Bucky.

Alta.

Not a bad sunset. Red is uphill, Blue is downhill that lead to a hitchhike back to our car at the White Pine Trailhead

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