Sometimes you can see life getting busy, and you have some stuff that needs to get accomplished. Skiing in August is one of those things. The snow is dwindling, and another silly goal to ski a different patch of snow for every month meant I couldn't ski Timpanogos in August because that's what I did last year, I was on a serious time crunch with work, work and work, and vacation. I have been very busy, and in fact today I got home from work at 8pm. Luckily on my way home I planned to go home and run inside and grab my skis, so out the door I was by 8:15pm. I parked in Albion Basin in Alta and headed for the Devils Castle Apron. One diagonal line of the last (barely) fully connected piece of snow in Alta, August 2nd 2010.
The hike up was stunning to say the least, wild flowers were out in full effect. Being that it was around 8:30pm, the setting sun really lit things up nicely. My mind soon was taken away from the flowers, when I noticed there was quite the sunset going on around me. Continuing up the mountain hoping to be skiing before dark , the sunset really took over my surroundings were glowing reddish orange. Continuing to push up the apron over the loose rock, I found myself reaching the snow, and getting my skis on fast, and taking in the scenery for a few minutes before I realized I was dropping in on some rough terrain.
The surface was like the choppy seas of the Bering strait , but it was hard with rocks on top of it and stank severely of gun powder. Careful and fun navigation on steep terrain for raw summer snow nearly in the dark, what fun! At the bottom I packed up fast, and made ridiculous noises to scare away the yelping animals while wandering back down to the car. I saw one moose and he looked pissed in the dark so I ran away. Luckily I got back home at 10:15, 2 hours later, because I’ve got alot of stuff to work on and definitely didn’t think I would have got this done but real stoked I did.
there is like 4 other photos AND FULL QUALITY (ns kind of shrinks them down for load speed) on the website
www.independentgeartest.com 