What the f$%& are we doing here?!

Yesterday, my roommate (who I think would rather remain anonymous) suggested the idea to go do a full-moon backcountry tour. I had never done one before and was immediately interested as I love getting in trouble in darkness. Also, it was something different and could potentially be powder-filled. We decided on hitting up God's Lawnmower, a 60-70 degree angled slope start that mellows out into about 40 degrees. It's a north facing run making it a perfect choice, since the slope doesn't get a ton of sun exposure. Also, it's been a line I've researched and had serious desire to do.

God's Lawnmower from the side

9:00pm Tuesday
We hit the trail and started the 3000' trek straight uphill through Argenta to reach our final destination. The skin up was pretty incredible: the moon barely peering over the ridge lighting up the mountain landscape, cool temperatures, and remnants of powder above 9500'. This was shaping up to be great.

1:00am Wednesday
We reached Kessler Peak. probably the sketchiest part of the entire tour, or what we thought would be. In short, you reach the top of Kessler, then traverse to God's Lawnmower passing through Argenta. (A photo of the route is below, at the end.)

On top of Kessler Peak, just the moon and peaks

2:00am Wednesday
We're actually on-time when it comes to getting to God's Lawnmower, transitioning over, and sending the line back to the car.

(Which by the way, God's Lawnmower, is named because of it's wide open area...like if God mowed the mountains. This can create really sketchy avy conditions.)

Instead of shooting to the top, because we would have to down climb into the zone that we would drop because of lack of snow; we stayed low. Traversing under the cliff band and scoped out God's from an adjacent ridge, we thought it looked good.

From the ridge, we created steps to get down to not break off a cornice and cause in avalanche onto ourselves. Roommate goes down while I stayed on top waiting just in case something broke. Roommate doesn't feel to great about the conditions, from afar, they seem somewhere between decent and good.

Roommate drops about 35 yards to a bunch of trees to get set up to ride because he doesn't want to get caught in an avalanche if it so happens when I come down. (By standing uphill of trees, they provide a way of anchoring you while an avalanche comes at you. Painful probably, but better than standing downhill of them and trying to cling on to a tree while tons of snow come barreling down at you at 50mph. What I'm trying to say is, an avalanche is stronger than your weak arms.)

The situation from above and the tree that he working to get to.

So roommate drops, set ups. I decide to get down off the ridge finally and I sink waist deep into a crazy-scary facet layer. (Facet snow is the "oh shit" snow when reading snowpack. It's a weak layer of snow that doesn't hold what is on top of it, and can easily cause avalanches.) Facets are scary because of multiple reasons, but for me at this very moment, I was freaking out that I was going to get buried...by sinking into it. I couldn't get a solid footing and every time I went to take a step up, I would sink further, furthering my cased-up freak out session.

Roommate was freaked out and hesitant to drop over the facets because 1) We were on an avalanche proned slope and 2) the facets were incredibly weak, the weakest I have ever seen in my short backcountry snowboarding career.

Sitting there, sinking, was the first time in a long time that I asked "What the f$%& are we doing here?!" Yes, I enjoy the danger in everything that I do: rock climbing and snowboarding/splitboarding, but this was all too real.

I just kept thinking, "This is really bad." Fortunately, my roommate kept calm and had a plan in mind.

3:15am Wednesday
Instead of dropping the line that we had initially chosen because if we did there was a great chance of triggering an avalanche in both of our opinions, we bailed and came up with another plan.

By way of creating steps back up to the ridge that felt like was miles away but really was about 20 feet up, we started on sinking faceted snow, my roommate anchored himself and pulled himself up one step at a time. I came one step at a time as well getting out of that incredibly stupid debacle. Finally out, we slap hands/fist bump and are thankful to be out of that. I don't even care about riding at this point, but it would make things better. After deliberation, we decide to backtrack and hit Argenta, which surprisingly had some amazing powder slashes. But still...

...I sit here at 4:30am or something, writing this. I've learned a lot from this experience. And I think my roommate put it perfectly saying, "We definitely got lucky, and got a second chance...not many people get those in the backcountry." Which is absolutely true and will be considered the next time I ever am in a decision making process about dropping a line that just doesn't look/feel right but from the ridge, it looked good. So how do you know? Is this part of the risk, part of the "game" so to speak?

I don't know what point I'm trying to make here it's more of a vent session. But I guess when I think about all of the dangers in the things I do, are they worth it? Oddly, I always answer yes. Just because of this experience (or if something worse to happen) it wouldn't mean it would stop me from doing the things I love. For every 10 or so highs that I have I always end up with one low but it's normally a really big low. It's all probability, whether it happens in climbing or splitboarding. Minimizing those lows are important to consider but like I said, things happen. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. It's not always what it's like on my Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Vimeo. I hit lows, and my lows are harsh and potentially be deadly.

Specifically, I've learned 3 things tonight:
1) Never pursue God's Lawnmower, at night. Or any tough line for that matter.
2) Stay safe out there, and turn away as soon as instincts tell you to. It's not worth dying for.
3) Get better at skiing. No I'm not switching sports, but it would be nice to be able to traverse with skis when in skin mode.

...I'm exhausted and have work in the morning. Night everybody.

(I have photos but I left the cord at the office. Check back for those, the mountains really are incredible under the moonlight.)

Our Route

Our route: red uphill, blue downhill

Salt Lake City from above