OFF PISTE ADVENTURE IN UTAH: Meet Me At The Y

A complete gallery of images can be found HERE

The call came on Monday night: “I want to do the Y.” Caroline admitted to not having toured much this season, but persisted. “I’ve wanted to do it my whole life. And I know there’s a boot pack up it right now.” The Y is that kind of line. Visible briefly from Little Cottonwood Canyon road, the couloir temps skiers driving to or from Alta and Snowbird daily. Like Caroline, I’ve driven past it for years, my neck craning against the window to check the snow conditions and imagine my ascent and descent. With snow forecast for Wednesday, it seemed that Tuesday would have to be our window.

It seems we wouldn’t be the only ones.

At 7:15 we started the 3,200-foot, 40-degree climb from the bottom of the Y. There was already a group of two visible ahead of us, and within moments, a group of three skied down past us. In all, we saw at least six other groups and a total of about a dozen skiers.

It was a low-stress climb with little exposure that rarely got steeper than the advertised 42-degrees. The chute was filled-in well, but had been skied heavily. The snow was firm winter chalk. We reached the forested summit headwall a little before noon, where the snow got softer and less supportive. We stopped about 100 feet from the actual summit. After watching another climber wrestle for about a half hour with whippets and rope trying to gain the last 50 feet of rock and sugar snow, we decided to ski from here. –Derek Taylor

A complete gallery of images can be found HERE