San Joaquin chute

This is a picture of the San Joaquin chute which is the slit down the middle of the circus tent rock wall. I took this from the top of See Forever which is the run that runs the top ridge of the resort and this was taken off the back side of it. Over the course of the season I made friends with some locals who skied the 'dark side' exclusively, one of them being Jaime the crazy hippy who invited me to come telemark some backcountry with him and a couple of his friends. So we exited the resort through the backcountry gate at the top of lift 14 first thing in the morning. We alternated between skinning and bootpacking around the various bowls and finally the right ridgeline all of which took a few hours and we ended up summiting around midday.

This was taken by Jaime about midway down the chute. Lucky for us the three inches of snow we got the day before had windloaded the chute to about six or seven inches. It is not as much of a hairy kitchen wall as it looks from a distance but is still a no-fall zone for the most part. The only really sketchy part is the pitch next to the rock outcropping in the very top right corner of this picture where it gets about as wide as a ski length and briefly becomes a 50 degree slope.
















To the left is Jaime with a view down valley toward Utah's La Sal mountain range (on the horizon). And above is a shot of me, from midway looking down the chute. I decided to put these up because it is probably the most intense thing I've ever skied and definetly the most fun.