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What have we learned?  Brett leaves the Wasatch; it dumps.  Liam can't spell.  Skiing powder is easy.  The Chugach will kick your ass and teach you more in 9 days then you ever thought possible.  And after a 4,000' vertical approach  involving two glaciers, a couloir, and a sketch ridge/face rock/snow ascent; Squinny will send the booter to the top of a 9,000' Chugach monster and bake you cookies. 

Congrats.

More to come

KS

mother wasatch strikes back.

Let me tell you a little tale of the time a skier boy left the wasatch. As the myth goes,the fore fathers once told me, if a skier boy was to leave the wasatch the wasatch would strike back.... On March 23rd 2009 this myth became reality.
Brett Beattie one of the fore fathers of the skier boyz finished packing his bags early monday mornin and you could tell things were about to go arye in the mountains. The winds were changing and the buffulo were calm waiting for what was approaching. The storm came in slow and quite as a ninja through the night, no one knew what was on the horizon only that it had the potential to be epic.
It was not until that crucial moment on Monday at 5 o'clock when an unknown voice whispered through the air. "All passengers headed to Alaska this is your last boarding call." And all at once as if Mother Wasatch was watching from a far, she began to bring her rath down upon us in a furry like no other. With wind,snow and lighting she challenged any other skier boy to leave her side. For two weeks she would not let us leave the white room and at times took away your ability to breath and see, as you made your way through the blanketed forest floor.
So that is the tail of a skier boy... The wasatch had a record setting 2 week total of 170 inchs before she began to calm. So if you see Brett Bettie roaming around the streets of Salt Lake talkin to himself with his bottle of whisky and a squinny pup at his side be sure you shake his hand and thank him, for he was the choosen one...the one who brings the powder!

Liam.... See you guys soon.

Dan Curran dropping the top of Superior S face.
Liam Obrien thanks Bret B and God for this moment in the Lawnmower.

Talia Keys likes her chowder blower.


NH Tom finds birch bliss.

AK Update II

Well, if its not the volcano it's high winds or high winds and a volcano.  We still haven't made it out yet.  We spent all day Saturday chilling at the Majestic Mountain Lodge and Meekin's hangar waiting for a weather window.  The lodge and flying service are located about 120 miles NE of Anchorage.  Meekin had made a beer run down to Palmer in one of his Super Cubs and got stuck there.  The folks at the Lodge were extremely nice.  The fed us and let us use a room to sort our food.  

The weather started to clear.  We heard a plane and Meekin landed on his snow runway.  We exploded the gear in his hanger and got everything organized.  We picked a new objective: the Powell Glacier.  The Super Cub is a two seater (Pilot and Passenger).  Brett loaded his gear and they took off.  Chills.   Until he returned about 45 minutes later.  High winds and glacier fog.  

High winds forecast for Sunday so we headed back to Sutton.  We hit up the Alpine Inn for some beers.  We met a real Alaskan treasure: Earl.  He took a special shine to me and petted my hair quite a bit.  Em and Brett learned what a bell in an Alaskan bar means; you ring it you buy the bar a round.  Earl rang it, Brett rang it, Earl rang it, and the shame spiral was full on.

We went back to Uncle Tom's Cabin for pasta.  We were planning on riding out the wind by skiing Hatcher Pass on Sunday.  Sunday morning: ash, but maybe not too much.  Wrong, balls ash everywhere at Hatcher.  To the liquor store and Joanna Fabrics.  The Spiral was starting to grow, swallowing up cars and farm animals.

Today, no ash, new snow and down to Turnagain.  The weather looks good for Tue-Thur, so hopefully, we fly.  

KS

Photos:

Ash at Hatcher Pass

Brett flying out

Mike Meekin's hangar and our shit

Squin prusik-ing at the condo

Redoubt blowing on Friday night

Skier Boyz 2nd Nebo ascent

What a way to spend St. Patty's Day. Early on March 17 Shreddy, Brett and I Headed for Mt. Nebo. After a small detour in a gravel pit, some hairy 4 wheelin and some precision parkin. We were on our way. The approach was fairly straight forward for us since an old skinner was still visible. It was still about a 5 1/2 hour ascent, with a few intense boot pack competitions. "Which I let Brett win."

We were the only people to sign the log at the peak since Todd and his group were there on the 28th of Feb. We left "Happy St. Patty's day from the skier boyz" as our log in.

The ski was a steep and tight top section with a chalky snow. Into a more open and mellow shoot which lead to a giant apron of soft corn and three sets of quads that were ready to explode. Diffenenty an awesome area to explore with a lot more potential, I look forward to more trips in the future.

-Liam

Stairs gulch

So im running a little behind with some blogging but I think its still worthy. Liam, Jake, John F, and Dan C. Headed up bonkers and skiied stairs gulch. Done by many skier boyz before but a first for me and defiantly a classic. The conditions were still very soft. Even after a few days of sun.

The pics show John at the top and Jake and Dan not far behind and Liam finishing the 2nd pitch of the ski.

Alaska Update

Well, of course the volcano blew, and of course the volcano is right next to the Neacola Mountains, and off course the ash cloud destroyed our plans.

So.....

We got a new game plan. We'e flying out of Sheep Mountain Lodge with Meekin' to the Scandinavian Hut. Hopefully the Yvergenhauf Couloir is filled in. The hut is at 5,000' and we'll be in an area more known for the climbing than the skiing. We'll be surrounded by 8,000 and 9,000' peaks which we will ski regardless if they are technical climbing routes or not. Ice and snow will rain down on the angry climbers as we try to make one more jump turn.

Should be interesting.

In other news:

GB6K, Squin, Bret and I skied Hatcher yesterday under mostly sunny skies. We skinned to the top of Skyscraper and sent 2 laps in El Dorado Bowl. The snow was surprisingly good.

One of the original founding fathers, the Pennsylvania Prince, arrived in Rage City 2 weekends ago to get the rust off his Purple Explosives. We (GB6K, UK, Kat, PA Prince) skied Sunburst at Turnagain and the next day we (UK, Kat, Annie K, PA Prince) took a couple of laps in El Dorado under blue bird skies with about 12" of the fresh AK goodness.

Other than that, trip preparation dominates the day.

- U.K.

Mirror Lake Sled Assist Fest

Got a call from Alice a week or so ago to say that she and her boyfriend were going to be heading down to Utah from Washington and were interested in renting a yurt or hut. Gramps and I started pulling together some ideas and I decided to rent the Boundary Yurt, just south of Evanston Wyoming in the Uinta Mountains. I had ski toured at this yurt earlier this season with Nate and Tara and was fairly familiar with the powder terrain in the area. For this trip, however, Gramps and his friend John would be bringing their snowmobiles, so we could do some exploration in on the Mirror Lake Highway, an area traditionally only seen by skiers after the road is open, usually early June. After a day of skiing amazing recrystallized powder shots by the yurt, we took the snowmobiles on a long rally up the Mirror Lake Highway on St. Patricks Day, searching for our own pot of gold, in the form of snow filled Couloirs. We had two sleds, and Gramps' sled was having some overheating trouble, so John ended up towing Me, Alice, Lehua, and Stacy behind his sled for 10 out of the approximately 15 miles we drove in search of a line to ski. We ended up finding an amazing west facing coilour off North Ridge of Hayden Peak. The west facing couloir was not like anything I expected to find in the Uintas. It was truly alpine in nature, with solid snowpack and amazing rock lined walls for approximately 1,500 feet. Upon booting over the ridge, where we expected to find wind scoured Uinta garbage, we instead found another couloir, in fact, an entire cirque on the opposite east facing side. This aspect was still powder and we obviously had to ski one if these couloirs as well. We returned to the saddle where Alice and Lehua were waiting for us, to find the west facing coilour in perfect corn conditions. We skied it like the boyz, returned to the sleds, and drove the 15 miles back to the yurt to enjoy a steak BBQ and libations imported from Washington. -

Adam M. Lawton

Potrero Chico

While ya'll were sitting up in the safest city in Amerika or somewhere else cold and or flat I took a little trip to mexico with three cool and beauitful ladies from Crested Butte.
Packed up the car and made it there and back for less than a hundred including gas food and booze. Did i mention booze. Dollar Margaritas and Pina Coladas at camp with dollar meals complete with fresh veggies from Sexico. UGGGGGGGGGH Uncle Keith I know you dont climb but you sure can drink and this would be a nice vacation for you.
We climbed some awesome limestone every day that goes up to 25 pitches of bolted goodness. So many routes you'd freak. Such good rock I was leading 5.hard off the couch.
I think I might have to move there.
It was hard to leave shirtless climbing weather, good food, and good company.
Now Im back to cold temps and skiing. Not bad, but I sure miss that trip of a lifetime.

One last thing

UGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH


The park has mexicans hanging out in their trucks drinking and playing mexican people music you can hear as you climb up.

Camp 5 bucks a night with a kitchen, bathroom, showers, a restaurant, a bar, and good people

Wavy

Tower on the route. Sweetest shit ever with an arch in the middle half way up the first pitch. Top pitch goes up the lookers left arete and changes corners from slab to overhung jugs, ugh. 5.10 R One of the coolest climbs ive ever done

Cristina, Alyssa, Todd, Britney and tequilla and fluffy the cat

Enterance to the park.

UGGGGH

The Money Shot

Lars hikes toward Rainbow Peak while SLC still sleeps below.

Ahhhh! Good morning Thunder Ridge.

Lars makes some warm up turns off Rainbow on the way towards bigger objectives.

Its a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. Thunder Stadium.




Bret and Lars climbing to the top and happy to be on the ridge of safety.

"Oh man this is gonna be fun"

Lars skiing where no VT gremlin has before.

Orangehat Dan shooting up some spray for the boyz.

What the boyz left behind.

The east face of Thunder Ridge has many options off of it for big lines to ski so it was a perfect location to get to after a twenty four inch storm in twenty four hours. We were racing the strong March sun as we do every year at this time and we found out that leaving the parking lot at 430 am was not early enough to tag any of them before the sun did. Trail breaking was difficult and left our legs tired for the final push up the Hypodermic Needle. Thanks Bret, Lars and Dan for the strong effort. Once at the top we contemplated skiing down our ascent route, but decided to take a look at the north facing Coalpit Headwall. We were the only people in sight and the snow was looking remarkable on this aspect. So we skied it like the boyz. I hope to be back on this ridge this year and dropping down one of those east shots, but if not I know the Coalpit will be good, it always is. Kid Buf.

Free-Riding the Sierra's

The forecast for the sierra's was calling for 6 feet above 8000 feet Lars, Chopo, and myself hopped in the van drove all night. Alpine meadows parking lot, unloading the free ride vanDank moss, fresh snow big sierra treesLars playing on Alpine's terrain
Free riding every meal in the van

Lake Tahoe from Squaw
Lars and the Chilean Free-ride team Claudio, Chopo, Arnau, Nikco. ....... what's her name Lars

This sequence is a spine Lars skied at Sugar Bowl, "Stress" dubbed by Chopo really called palisades the pictures do this line no justice nice job Lars

Arnau Fernandez captain of the Chilean Free ride Team showing us how to suss

My first time skiing in California exemplified what follow skier Boyz member Dylan Crossmen said "I want to reinvent the real free rider, the rider who rides as free as possible". Thanks to Chopo Diaz and our Chilean friends we did some serious sussing staying in Lar's van (living out of a van is awesome.) And getting hooked up with Arnau's Chilean magic trick we skied Squaw and Sugar no costa. I know that its been mostly new big mountain lines on the blog, embrace all aspects, spines, pillows, airs steeps, chutes, and or course snow that sticks to the rocks. Like the presidente' says go there ski it. simple I can live with that. ride free. ---- bret

Over Crowding in AK

10:45 is Early in AK. Not a track in sight.

Second Lap. Still no tracks.

The road that nobody uses.

There are even first track for dogs.

I claim this shot for skierboyz.

I guess there was a way through to the skiers right...

Friday night I picked up a friend from Talkeetna and decided to take him out to Hatchers Pass to begin the formal interview process for his application to the Skier Boyz. It was a perfect day and we chased after some great lines that I had been looking at for a while. At 9:30 am when we arrived at the parking lot we were the only car there. by the time we had set the skinner and got to the top of the cirque we looked down to find....one other car parked down there. It wasn't until our second lap that people started to show up and damn if there weren't almost a dozen cars in the whole area by the end of the day.

The skiing was great though for the first time this year we seemed to be getting sun affected snow as as the glowing ball of cancer rays fell towards the horizon anything shading started to crust up. Fortunately we were finished before that became an issue. - TOM