By Curmudgeon
Interesting article on Ogden and skiing in today's New York Times about skiing the west face of Mt. Ogden from the ridge line to Ogden city.
Here are a few of the opening graphs. It's a very long article, with a good picture included:
It was a Saturday morning, sunny and clear at 8:30. Mr. Robinson, an airline baggage handler and budding professional skier, was transferring his gear to an idling car parked next to his.“I could ski from the summit right to this street,” said Mr. Robinson, who lived five blocks away when he was in college.Ed. note: Well let us see... in order to properly service that route for all those east coast tourists, we're probably gonna need a couple of gondolas, right? It appears as if the gondola cult is putting in a little public relations overtime.
The summit Mr. Robinson referred to was Mount Ogden, which, at 9,570 feet, dominates the skyline above its namesake town. In a good snow year, a massive squiggle of white known as the Banana Chute fills in on Mount Ogden’s rocky northwest face, creating a dramatic entrance to a skiable descent that is larger than any lift-accessible run in the country.
Calibrate your altimeter at the top and you can ski for four miles and nearly 5,000 vertical feet, from the thin alpine air, down through the maw of the chute, over ridges and meadows of untracked snow, then into a creek bed that funnels the backcountry line to its unlikely terminus at the residential grid of a midsize American town.
The Banana Chute experience, which can be reached by a short hike out of bounds from Snowbasin ski resort off Highway 167 east of Ogden, is not for the tame or the uninitiated. This is a locals’ adventure, where avalanche dangers are present and real. The terrain is for advanced and expert skiers only, with cliffs, trees, traverses and rock-studded slopes best led by a guide who knows the route.
The gondola-obsessed never rest!
Gondolas, anyone?
Don't all chime in at once.
