So Will Cardamone, Jake Sakson, and I decided to take a trip out to Salt Lake for the Outdoor Retailer show. We hoped on to the Amtrak train in Glenwood and went Salt Lake Bound. I have always wanted to take the train out there, and try to eliminate the expenses of driving. It turned out to be an awesome way to get out there, cheap, easy, and comfortable. In fact I am going to take it in a few weeks for a Telemark competition in Tahoe.
When we arrived in Utah the snow had already been falling pretty good, and we all were psyched for some pow it had been ages for all of us. Noah from the Powderwhores picked us up at the train station and took us to the PW mansion at the base of big cottonwood. We all got our gear unpacked and got psyched for the days to come, we knew it was going to be deep.
On our first day out we headed up to the backcountry playground of Butler Fork. Once arriving at the trailhead I knew it was going to be deep, there was big ol snowbanks as well as lots of snow surrounding the skin track. I was pysched, face shots again.
Once we got to the top and dropped in, the feeling of skiing bottomless pow on my Megawatts was fulfilled once again. God I love these skis in the bottomless stuff, they are just amazing. We ended up filming and skiing about 5 or 6 different runs and got some good footy for the upcoming PW film. Our mouths were full of powder and we headed back down the canyon for some nice and tasty lonestar burritos…. It was dumping all day and we knew it was supposed to dump all night, so manana was going to be sick.
We woke the next morning hungry for more faceshots… We headed up the canyon again, and decided the same place would be just as safe and still really good, Butler Fork called again. As we pulled in we knew, today was going to be epic…. it ended up being beyond epic, it was by far the deepest day of my life. The snow was so light, and there was so much of it that it was just absolutely amazing. We were creating 5 ft troughs, and it was just so light. Check out the vid and you will see:
After receiving nothing but epic pow in Utah, Will and I had to head out for a Backcountry.com photo shoot down in Telluride. We were going out with Lee Cohen, Tommy Chandler, Jen Berg, Jonny A., Dustin, and Nick Devore. We had heard they got slammed with the snow storm as well, so we were pretty psyched about it.
We arrived at our pads just slopeside and got settled in for a fun-filled day on Telluride. Kim Havel, who lives in Telluride helped show us around the mountain and take us to the spots that were good. It was pretty sketchy avy conditions so we had to keep it on resort for the duration, which was fine because we still were able to get some goods. Here is a video from that day:
Unfortunately on the last day we all picked up a nasty sickness, and we couldn’t sleep at all on our last night there. We headed back to Aspen that Thursday, a bit groggy and still really under the weather. We were all really tired and after about an hour outside of Telluride, Jonny dosed at the wheel and we went off the embankment and totalled jonnys truck. It was crazy none of us got hurt but the truck was done for. It was a somber end to an epic 8 days of skiing. Luckily we all were ok though, and we took a tow truck to Grand Junction, then my pops came and picked will and I up. What an epic it was, and we all are very fortunate none of us got hurt. Here are a few pics from Tommy Chandler, from the aftermath:
Until next time, pray for snow!!!
Chris






































































































