Tuckerman Ravine on crack..... an analogy for a friend I convinced to go on this trek with me. The Cold Fusion on Mt. Timpanogos a 3000 foot line tucked away on the north peak of Timpanogos that if you have been anywhere south of point of the mountain on I 15 this line sticks out like herpes.
A few cold days in a row in the Wasatch led to the ability to take a late start. We got on our bikes at 830 am with 40 pound backpacks. You bike up the road, then another road that turns to dirt. A moderate pitch for biking for 6-8 miles (estimate) leads you to the base of the COLD FUSION. I looked at my clock and it took 2.5 hours to bike to the base of the chute. Most people do 2 hour bike rides and call it a day, to do a 2.5 hour bike ride and only be to the base of something you want to ski really spices up the journey. We put our skins, ditched unessesary avalanche gear and extra layers, and hightailed it up the lower parts of the erosion gully, when you emerge from the wooded section your hopes and dreams of a miraculous fast descent are shattered. The line stands above you like 3 empire state buildings and might create an illusion in your brain that you cant make the top.
However if you keep going, keep moving (the big thing), you will make it. My partner whom the bike approach destroyed stayed low in the shade to recover, while I set my sights on the top. Traded skins for crampons left foot, right foot, left foot, soon i was at the top of the snow on the line i chose as safe to hike. Though from here I had a 20 minute rock scramble upwards to the top of the ski line.
The feeling that comes over you after doing something like this is the ultimate and really makes you feel like you have more free time and cash than the guys that run FD outerwear. I cleaned the rocks out of my dynafit inserts and attached skis and sent some buttery gs turns on perfect corn. I collected my skins that were stashed where I put on crampons, met up with my buddie and we skied back to our bikes, and biked back downhill what we biked up in a stupor that morning.
We got back to the car, explored american fork canyon until we found a rugged road that led to some alpine lakes with a great view of timpanogos and really started to relax the afternoon away.
