Apr 15: You Wish

You wish you got up at 3:45am.
You wish you skinned 90 minutes (1700') up an icy slope.
You wish you stood under this cliff (shivering) as the sun broke the horizon.

You wish you saw Sarah send this one (half a second earlier).

You wish you had snow like this.

You wish you had April faceshots.

You want to know where this is?

You wish. Ha!

(Hint: head to Alta, and look UP.)

April 11: Spring Cliffs

Spring is trying to break through, but the skiing is still so good!
We made some beautiful deep turns, then focused on a few cliffs.

Standing under this cornice is not as scary as it looks. But approaching the steep blind lip of this cliff is scarier than it looks. (So said Nicole, Sarah and Cascade [pictured].)

And yes, as I was setting up my camera some backcountry-Bob tele-beater put that ugly turn in the foreground. *sigh*

We hit this a few times, and a couple other ones too.
Then it warmed up and turned into water skiing.

More snow due this week.

Apr 10: Red Rocks

Forecast called for heaps of snow in southern Utah.

We chased it. Drove 5 hours through rain wind graupel ice...

Saw one car spin off I-15 @ ~70mph. Crazy!

Got there late, took a sunset lap, and returned through this sparkly boulevard.

Camped at 10,500'. Headed out at 5am. Made a good plan, but skinned in a huge %#$*-ing circle and ended up back at our original skin track, right at sunrise. Made a left instead of a right. Whoops.

Then we looked across and saw our line.

3..2..1..Dropping!

Oh, crap, we're still 2 miles away?

Much discouraged, we started over. We still found some really cool terrain.

Matt scouts a line.

Looking in from the top.

Nate works through the (unskiable) pepper entrance, as Matt lowers the skis.

We also found some simpler terrain that matched my photo style.

We returned to the car when it started getting warm.

The aspens were amazing, but the snow was too soggy to ski them.

5 hr drive. 2 hr sunset ski. 4 hrs sleep. 8 hr tour. 4 hr drive home. A handful of interesting photos, and 1 helluva good time.

It was my 4th sunrise tour in 7 days. And we're going out tomorrow for another one. It's been a good spring.

Feb 9: Super Ior

Yesterday was 'one of those days.'

I shot this on my first lap, then didn't touch the camera again for the rest of the day. The skiing was just too good.

Today, the touring was amazing. We started at 5am, hit our lines and finished before 10. I'm sure there are 100s of people still out there, tearing it up.

The sun didn't cooperate, and it was cold up high, but we found some big lines, little jumps, and great turns.

Justin on a big line.

Nicole on a little jump.

Cascade on a great turn.

The light didn't turn out (although an hour later, it was perfect), but we had a grand time up there.

More tomorrow.

Jan 27: Big Time

4:30 wake up.
5:15 rendezvous.
6:00 trailhead, skins on.

7:30 first saddle, 1500 gain, 1.7 miles up. sunrise.

8:15 aspen glades and long shadows.

9:00 recon base, under the face.

10:15 final ridge. big exposure. a slip left would be bad (fatal?), running on hard steep crust.

10:30 final summit in view.

11:45 standing on the summit (left), 3100 gain, 3.5 miles. the line is rather implied by this angle, but i won't give away exactly how we sent it.

12:00 the entrance proves a bit tricky. (sorry Kate, can't resist)

12:05 Kate recovers and skis it to perfection. (this one is soft and I'm blaming it on the lens. the auto-focus totally bounced this time. I shouldn't have trusted it. I was shooting two cameras simultaneously at varied focal length, but it's a shame I didn't get this right.)

12:05 flying through the runout.

12:35 regroup at the bottom. Justin Sarah Kate Hazen. note the lines.

1:15 back at the saddle, we admire the tracks. Sarah put in the left line, super stylish, and earned photo of the day (not shown). Kate put in the upper-right chute (in shade). Justin's creeps into the bottom corner, direct from the summit.

1:30 back to the car.

7:45 bedtime??

April 27: Get Fit

I've decided to tour the Oregon coast by bicycle. I'll start in Astoria and ride 400+ miles to Crescent City.
There's a lot to do before I'm ready, including getting fit, organizing gear, planning the route, etc.

I've ridden 120 miles this week, 20-30 miles at a time. I've done a mix of flatland cruising with the aero-bars and steep mountain climbs. The Oregon coast will demand that I can handle a varying pitch.

A friend also directed me towards this great site for tracking my rides.
www.mapmyride.com

Here's my flatter cruising ride from yesterday.
26 miles, with 1000'  total ascent.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE, for detail)

Here's my steeper ride from Sunday.
35 miles with 3050' total ascent.
The last 2 miles are about 7-9% grade. (There's also a lot of snow up there at 7500'. The descent was rather cold.)

(CLICK TO ENLARGE, for detail)

I've calculated the routes and profiles for the Oregon coast ride, broken into 40-60 mile increments. There's nothing as hard as the above ride, but I'll be hauling my camping gear and clothes. There are a couple big days, ~50 miles and ~3000' ascent. Yikes!

Wish me luck.

Feb 11: Avy Tests

Nate Hansen and I went out to poke around in the new snow (5"), look at the Avy conditions, and try to ski some powder (which has been very elusive lately in the Wasatch).

Here's a video of our cornice cutting avy tests.

Avy Test from Jeremy Koons on Vimeo.
We cut a few cornices to see the reactivity of the snowpack.
5" of new snow, with a little more windblown snow on top.
Crusts everywhere, from warm preceding days.
The first cut produced nothing.
The second produced a small slide. 5-10" deep, ~60' wide, running not much more than 100', although the visibility was bad enough that we could only see ~100'.
The target slope was E-NE, just over 30 degrees.
The sliding surface was the old snow surface, not all the way to the depth hoar ground layers.
We were just East of Alta, SE of Rocky Point.

A ski cut on a small sample slope produces a slide. Due South facing, windblown dense snow on top of the suncrust. 4-10" deep. 40' wide. Ran not far at all.

The toe of the 'debris' pile. Not more than a foot deep.

Profile of the test slope. Small and forgiving.

In case you were wondering why all these photos are grey and ugly, it's because I'm trying to show you contrast and detail in the fractures. If I exposed it for a ski photo, it would look like this. Pretty (maybe), but you can't see the debris.

Oh yeah, we also skied a little bit. Jealous? Hahaha

Feb 10: Tetons Touring

Finally, I made it through the edits.
(Also, the video is a large file, for your viewing pleasure, so be patient while it loads.)


Tetons Touring Feb '10 from Jeremy Koons on Vimeo.
We spent 3 days touring the Teton Pass area.
I shot 3000 images, about 75% time lapse, and a bit of HD video.
We stayed in Driggs, ID, at the NOLS branch, where they provided $5 meals and free housing.
All we had to do was clean the walls. What a deal!

Feb 5: Tetons Recap

3 days in the Tetons.

Nearly 1000 miles in the car.

16" of new snow.

Free housing (trade for cleaning).

$10/day food.

Total spent, per person, ~$75. Wow.

Oh yeah, heaps of video, and ..... over 3000 images.

The crew: Nate Hansen, Andrew Hansen, Andrew Yue, and Jeremy Koons

I check out the Teton Valley with Nate and Andrew.
Andrew.

Andrew.

Nate.

Nate.

Andrew (mirror).

Andrew.

Jeremy.

Jeremy.

Earning our room & board, cleaning the laundry room walls.

There are 1000's of images yet to come, and video too.

A time lapse video of the entire trip is in the works.

It should be interesting.

Check back soon to see it.

Dec 9: More of the same

Things I learned today, on another failed ski tour:

1. When you wake up at 4:30, you should eat more than a bowl of cereal. At about 8:30, after 3 miles of skinning/booting, you'll be wicked hungry.

2. Just because the data says 15" doesn't mean there will be more than 4".

3. Just because the map shows a road doesn't mean the road is open.

4. Zero degrees is cold. Minus three is cold enough to turn your sweat into ice.

5. Hiking before dawn is magical. Seeing Puma tracks enhances the magic.

6. Just because the light is crap doesn't mean it won't get worse. Take your photos of the Puma tracks ASAP. At the very least, take some BEFORE a pack of dogs arrives and trashes the scene trying to find the kitty cat.

7. Walking on ice makes your butt sore, and your knees too.

8. Sometimes the right choice is to give up, turn around, and go home without even stripping skins.

9. A failed tour is still good exercise, and as they say, 'A bad day skiing is better than a good day at work.'

10. If your tour fails hard enough, you can still go back to work. What's a clever saying for a bad day skiing AND a good day at work?

Nov 3: Earned Turns

Here's what you must do to ski big UT lines in early November.

1) You must... wake up early (4:45) so that you can watch the sunrise over the mountains, from 10,000', after a 2000' hike.

2) You must... choose a suitable range. Little Cottonwood Canyon has a host of nice lines.

3) You must... make it to the top, alive. Early season conditions include some mixed terrain. Dry rock, wet rock, frozen rock, ice, snow, etc. It takes most of 4 hours to summit Mt Superior, much longer than in mid-season.

4) You must... take a break at the top to survey your surroundings, hydrate, eat, recoup, and make funny faces.

5) You must... invent a harness for first-person action photos, carry it to the top, test it, and make funny faces.

6) You must... throw your gear everywhere and make tough-guy faces. Don't worry, nobody will see you up there, because nobody in their right mind would hike 4 hours to ski a pile of rocks.

7) You must... make tough-guys faces while looking down, to really show everybody how bad-A you are. Also, make sure your gear is color coordinated to impress all the ..... ... again, there's nobody up there, so you won't impress anybody.

8) You must... test the camera one last time before the drop, and make some more funny faces.

9) You must... get serious. A fall here would be bad. Look at all those rocks! Remember the 2000' climb? Well now it could be a 2000' fall. So, choose your turns carefully and don't hit any rocks.

10) You must... make it through the rocks unscathed, then gun it to mach speed on the exit.

11) You must... take off all your clothes for the hike down. Remember that it's November 3rd and there's no snow. It's also bloomin' hot up there. Strip off your color-coordinated clothes and waltz down in your shorts and tee, highsocks and glacier glasses.

12) You must... take a nap.

(photo not included.)

Have a great tour. See you at the top.