After a three week ski trip to Japan in February 2019, I spent a month or so working in Salt Lake (trying to make up for spending too much money in Japan!) and skiing the Wasatch mountains. Later in March, I hit the road, living in my truck the next month and a half while I drove to Alaska to begin another summer with MICA Guides. I wasn’t heading straight north, though. From Salt Lake I would first drive south to Brian Head resort where I spent two days shadowing their ski patrollers in hopes of working with them the next winter (2019-2020).
From Southern Utah, the road took me west to meet up with Miles in California where we planned to ski Mt. Whitney and anything else we could dream up. We each had around three weeks to fit in as much as possible. Then I would make the drive to Canada and continue the nearly 5,000 mile journey. We spent a few days skiing inbounds at Mammoth Mountain, just up the road from Miles’ house, but mostly we would focus on big, multi-day adventures.
Mount Whitney was our main goal so we wanted to get that trip underway at the first sign of good weather, spending one night at Iceberg Lake before summiting and skiing down the next day.
Waiting for the next weather window, we spent a day ice climbing (Miles had never been!) up near Tioga Pass, close to where we had skied from the summit of Mt. Dana a year before. A 15 minute hike brought us to beautiful blue waterfall ice that was still super solid in April.
Miles went home to Mammoth for a few days while I camped out in the desert, enjoying the warm sunshine…
… and maybe some rain…
We met up early the morning of the 13th to start our next adventure, a three day tour into the Palisades. We would aim for the U-Notch ski route, and hopefully attempt to summit 14,000 ft peak or two while we were surrounded by them in the Palisade Glacier basin. This trip was one I was personally very excited about, partly because there was a proper living glacier right in our path, but also the scenery looked absolutely stunning in every direction.
We had prepped our packs the night before and slept in our trucks nearby so we could get moving relatively quickly after a breakfast at the trailhead. Around 7:00 a.m. we were just about to walk down the trail when 7 or 8 vehicles pulled into the parking area in a hurry, a couple of them County Sheriff trucks.
The local Search and Rescue team began quickly assembling gear, and suddenly Miles and I were wondering if we should be trying to help with a search instead of skiing for three days.
We were asking each other if we should approach them to see what we could do, when a SAR member walked straight over to us and asked “Miles…? David…?”
Uhh.. what? Now we were confused. How did they know our names? Had Miles’ girlfriend called them to find us before we even started our trip? Nothing made sense but we both nodded and mumbled some sort of confused, “Yeah…”
The man chuckled a bit and said “Well, I’ll have someone who will be very interested in speaking to you here in a second, stick around.” He turned and walked back to his truck, leaving us staring at each other in absolute bewilderment.
Were we in trouble for something? Could one of us have had a family emergency come up that warranted sending SAR to pull us out before we were gone for three days? And how the hell did they know where to find us? What was happening?
Soon, a second SAR member walked over and said Miles’ name. When he responded the man looked at me, confused, and said, “well now who are you?” I responded that I was David. Then he looked even more confused, asking “Miles David?”
“Well, he’s Miles, and I’m David, yeah.”
The man laughed and turned back to the rest of his team to yell, “this isn’t Miles David, these are two guys named Miles and David!” The confusion on our faces must have been priceless as the entire parking lot erupted with laughter.
They apologized for confusing and scaring us, and explained they were running a training scenario. Their objective was to find a ‘lost’ hiker – first name Miles, last name David – and run a rescue as if it were a real emergency.
Seriously. What are the odds!?
We all laughed about it and someone in the back yelled “Oh hey Miles!”
Because of course Miles knows one of them, he knows someone everywhere we go!
We chatted with the crew for a minute but they were all busy getting ready for their mock rescue, so we headed out, laughing about how seemingly impossible but incredibly hilarious that mix up was.
We had a beautiful but incredibly warm day of skinning up toward our planned basecamp. With amazing views in every direction, we continued slowly uphill in the intense heat.
Stopping for a break at some old ruins, we could finally see our objective ahead in the distance.
Through the doorway of the old house, if you look closely you can see the V-Notch (left) and U-Notch (center), where we hoped to ski from. Polemonium Peak, between the two notches, was one summit we figured we could easily add on to the U-Notch objective if everything went well. It was just a short scramble up from the top of the notch, adding very little time to our already long second day.
Continuing on from the ruins, we dropped into the next valley, then started back up the other side. It was getting hotter in the sun and snow was melting fast. It became wet under our feet and quickly began to clump to the skins strapped to our skis. Suddenly, our progress was slowed to a crawl and we were forced to stop and scrape our skis free of snow every few paces. Miles brought along some skin wax to help mitigate the problem, but it made little difference in these conditions.
The weight of the wet snow under our feet made upward progress incredible taxing. It felt like I had cinder blocks tied to my feet. And taking off skis would only prove more difficult as our feet would have punched through the melting snow with every step.
Luckily, such conditions are greatly defined by the angle of the sun and localized temperatures, so with a change in aspect and ascending as quickly as possible, we were out of the sticky cement within a few brutal minutes. It still stuck to skins, but not nearly as much of it.
We pushed on and found a suitable campsite among a few trees to block any wind that may come up the next few days. Then we began to dig.
and dig…
Until we had a suitable home for the next two nights.
It quickly became a comfortable hang out, but we had little time for that now. The sun was still high so we headed out to make some turns and get a better view of what was in store for us tomorrow.
We planned out a direct route toward the glacier, hoping to save some time route-finding in the morning, and skied back to camp in the beautiful evening light.
Camp was cozy, though, as we discovered the next morning, some reinforcing of the sides was needed to keep snow from blowing in under the tent.
We started out early and made decent time with our planned route, but the snow had softened the day before and froze overnight, presenting a nice icy crust under our feet for much of the morning. A cool wind helped to keep the snowpack hard and slippery as we made our way up toward our objective.
Our spirits lifted once we topped out over a small hill and saw blue ice of the glacier waiting below.
We had expected the winter’s snowfall to entirely bury the hard ice of the receding glacier, but the calving face above the now frozen lake was tall enough to stand above the deep snow.
The ice was a gorgeous sapphire blue against the bright snow, and we decided to stop for a snack break and enjoy the beauty, staying well away from the face, which had already dropped several large pieces of ice into the snow.
We felt very close to the bottom of the U-Notch and could see it clearly from here under blue skies, so we were in no hurry. However, once hiking again, it was clear the distance was further than it had first seemed. We still had a bergschrund to cross (crevasse-like crack between the mountain and the moving glacier) and the wind was picking up and building clouds overhead.
By the time we reached the bottom of the notch it felt like winter again, and the steep slope had become icy. I wanted to keep my skis on as long as possible, not knowing how wide or deep the ‘schrund was under fresh snow. Skis would help us stay on top easier is the snow was unstable, but the slope was much too steep for skins. I made numerous switchbacking kick-turns up the icy slope, while Miles opted to transition to crampons straight away.
We both crossed the bergschrund without incident, plenty of snow had filled it in this year, and I immediately traded skis for crampons as well. Now booting our way up the narrow couloir, my hand were becoming numb quickly in the intense wind whipping down in our faces. Miles was a machine breaking trail all the way up the U-Notch as I stopped to warm my hands and put on more layers. I caught him only at the top, where he had found shelter from the now brutal wind.
He was staring up at the scramble route to the summit of Polemonium Peak, only a few hundred feet above us, but I think he had already decided he really wanted to end the day here. Which was good because with already numb hands again, so did I.
After a quick look over the other side of the notch we wasted no time transitioning for the descent back the way we had come up.
The guidebook told us U-Notch topped out at a maximum 45 degree slope, but the snow at the top nearly formed a vertical wall from the wind-deposited snow. We carefully climbed backwards down the first drop to put our skis on mid-slope instead. It’s not an easy task to clip in in the middle of a 45 degree slope, but better than a mandatory air entrance into a tight boulder field!
Before we knew it we were back into the sunlight and out of the mountain wind on the glacier below. I was too cold to take out the camera for more photos, sorry!
We had an amazingly long and mellow ski all the way back to our camp, the wind having quickly displaced any hopes of summiting any of the surrounding peaks.
Instead, we decided to have a relaxing evening in our sun-warmed shelter.
We had a pretty early morning the next day, wanting to get out before the snow turned completely to mush. The first half went quickly and we returned to the parking lot after muscling our way through plenty of soft slushy snow at lower elevations.
Miles returned to Mammoth for a few days while I dried out in the desert, and we later met up and headed north. We had made new plans for our biggest single day ski so far – Mt. Shasta.
The Palisades were an incredible place and wonderful experience, but our nearly 7,000 ft ski run down perfect spring corn snow from the summit of Mt Shasta will be remembered as one of my all time favorite runs. So, while this blog is currently dedicated to glaciers and we didn’t cross any on Shasta (though there are plenty there), for now, I don’t plan for a separate post for that day. I do, though, feel it deserves at least some mention. And some day I’ll return to ski some of the glaciers!
Leaving the parking lot at 4:00 a.m., we had a full moon overhead and had no need for headlamps, except in dense trees. Sunrise from the slopes was an incredible experience, though it prompted many photo stops along the way. In all, it took us around 9 hours to reach the summit.
From the top, we enjoyed perfectly calm air, warm sunshine, and one hell of a ski run back to the parking lot.
The route up had taken 9 hours, and the return to the parking lot 90 minutes, including numerous long breaks to recuperate during the 7,000 ft descent.
After a burger in town, I would say goodbye to Miles and head north, meeting up with some more friends to share in more ski adventures all the way to Alaska.