About two weeks ago, the long awaited “jet stream pattern shift” occurred and ski areas across North America began receiving more consistent snowfall. This has been a much needed reprieve from a very dry early season.

Opensnow.com is a website run by meteorologist Joel Gratz. He offers regionally based snow forecasts tailor made for skiers and riders in search of fresh snow. His forecasts are comprehensive, updated daily, and let you know where and when to catch the best snow.

In this blog post from his site, he explains how “handcrafted” forecasts are more reliable and informative than computer generated forecasts and models. Thanks for all the hard work Joel!

Click here for his full post and check out this video from his “Don’t Eat Yellow Snow” video series.

“In March 1990, after several years of intense examination and patience, the impossible looking Little Wasatch Face was skied by its easiest route the “Why.” Four years later, an unlikely, unplanned descent of Heaven’s Eleven stunned the local ski community. Within a week of the first descent of Heaven’s Eleven, Brian O’Neil, Lance McDonald and Neil Ringstad continued the push on Little Wasatch Face, making first descents of the Grand Daddy, Oblivion Bowl and the North Why, establishing prominent lines and a few variations on the showcase face.” -Andrew Sawyer

Fortunate to descend this line with local ski legend Himay Palmer, below is a POV account of our ski descent

Grand Daddy Couloir

Check out Skiing Magazine’s website and enter to win a pair of your very own Wagner Custom Skis through their sweepstakes. Good luck, click here to enter before January 26th.

A Day in AK from Chason Russell on Vimeo.

Chason Russell and friends made a trip to Southeast Alaska last spring, check out this edit of one of their days on the glacier.

Skinning away from the truck at 04:45, stars shining brilliantly overhead, we broke trail up Garnet Canyon–feeling good and ambitious, hoping for steep turns on sweet snow and fun climbing.  We did find some of that, and some other stuff.  Like a questionably-frozen lake that creaked and popped as we puckered up and kept skinning across the ice.

Skinning below the Middle Teton at sunrise.

Entering the upper canyon--bulletproof skinning through rocks. Awesome. (Here, Z is skinning below the Z Face on Cloudveil Dome. How appropriate.)

Windy? Windy.

We found a whole lot of horrifically scoured snow in the upper canyon.  More scree than snow, actually.  The East Ridge of the South Teton held so little snow on it that we left our glisse gear at the bottom and climbed it for the sake of climbing.  (What?!)  Ski mountaineering turned into mountaineering, in a gusty wind that threatened to peel the skin off our faces.

Climbing the East Ridge in blustery conditions. Note the lack of skis on Z's pack.

No snowboard, but fun climbing. Amazing views, too.

Climbing back down the East Ridge. That's what you do when there isn't enough snow to ski.

Or you might opt for a rappel or two.

The mandatory Eddie Bauer shot. Contemplating how we're going to get out of the mountains.

See all that snow blowing around on the ridge? That was unpleasant. You can just make out our bootpack in the center of the image.

We also found horrifically awful turns (bulletproof windslab, 10″-tall sastrugi, remnants of last winter’s snowpack with the consistency of glacier ice.)  Lots of them.  Punctuated with stretches of scrambling over snow-dotted scree fields in a hurricane.

Check out Z's edge penetration into the hardpack. Mmmm.

Better turns as we drop down to 10,000'. Blustery up there!

To be fair, we found really good turns lower down as well, sweet powder thinly covering jagged granite.  Like skiing through a minefield, except the casualties were the bases of our boards.  We left curls of base material and edge shards all over that place.

And then we skinned back across that lake.

But the question is: would I do it again?  Hell yes, in a heartbeat.

*You may have noticed that I used the term “ski mountaineering” rather than “snowboard mountaineering”.  Fear not–I am indeed still snowboarding, and loving my Wagner Custom board and approach skis.  I use the term “ski” generically.  Consider it a pursuit of efficiency, or laziness.  “Ski” requires 6 fewer letters to type, and a whole syllable less to think or speak.

Check out this short edit for a taste of the skiing in Cerro Catedral, Argentina:

Volcan Puyehue erupting in the distance

Black Canyon of the Gunnison from Chason Russell on Vimeo.

We got to Lassen Volcanic Park just before sunset, fired up the Weber and filled ours stomachs with chicken  sausage and beer.  Waking up around 5am and at the  trail around 5:30 we easily made our way through the low trees to the bottom of the north face.

After half a PB&J we started boot packing the rest of the way to the summit, a little over a thousand feet and about an hour later we standing on top enjoying the view of the crater left behind by the 1914 eruption and Mount Shasta 80 some miles to the north.

Great skiing from the top on my first volcano, not a bad way to spend the day before the summer solstice.

Early to bed, early to rise makes man a hell of a nuisance.  The sound of the pre dawn alarm was hard to accept with the lingering clouds hanging around the peaks.    Off and on snow over the past two weeks and June approaching it was nice to have a sunny day to enjoy the new snow and blue sky.

Spring in southern Colorado is fun time early morning skis, afternoons on the river or today enjoying the warm sun sitting in the sun.  After a short hike with our skis over grass and fallen logs to snow line we made the ridge above the mountain hamlet of Ophir.

With May coming to an end corn snow is more the norm, but with a long winter thoughts of powder turns in the high San Juan’s ran through my mind.