2012 Speaker Series
Utah Adventure Journal, in conjunction with Snowbird Resort is pleased to announce the 2011/12 Adventure Speaker Series, taking place at the Wildflower Lounge at the Iron Blosam Lodge at Snowbird, on six Thursday nights this winter. Come and meet some local Wasatch adventurers, and hear their motivating and inspiring tales of high […]
A Fire Still Lit Within: Celebrating the Ten-Year Anniversary of the 2002 Winter Olympics
My skis point toward Champion, a moguled black diamond ski run at Park City’s Deer Valley. A thousand feet below, the colorful, ant-size children of ski school move helter skelter atop winter’s white blanket in front of the Snow Park Lodge. At the run’s edge, a sign marks the spot: the 2002 Winter Olympics […]
Big Game Hunting- Highs and Lows in the Sawtooth’s
Mt. Heyburn, jagged icon of the Sawtooth Mountains, presides over the upper Salmon River Valley. The range’s granitic ridgelines sport hundreds of pinnacles, large and small, like the gendarmes of Franceʼs Chamonix Valley. Skiing among them, down Heyburnʼs Petzoldt Couloir, inspires any ski mountaineer who visits. Dominating glacier carved Redfish Lake’s other skyline is the […]
Planning for Misadventure in the Uinta’s
When you venture into the backcountry, there’s only so much planning you can do. Natural variables will, at some point, alter your route, scrap your summit or dictate when you will – and won’t – pass go. All you can do is adjust to conditions and, willing enough, continue your quest for adventure. In […]
The Science of Snow
My friend Jill has 10 snowboards. Is this excessive? Perhaps not, after all there are well more than 10 different types of snow conditions, so why wouldn’t she have a snowboard for every snowccasion? There’s the split-board for early and late season touring, the split-board for mid-season touring, three park boards (one super soft, […]
Snow Blind in the Teton’s
March 2011, Grand Teton National Park Under a grey sky and through intermittent snow flurries, Charlie and I skinned up to and past the top of 25-Short, a 2,200-foot glade of pines on the Buck Mountain Massif. Our plan is to gain a ridge that divides the north and south forks of Avalanche Canyon […]
Near Naked Refuge for Cold Times: Maple Grove Hot Springs
In general, I’d rather be naked. Preferably outside. This passion of mine doesn’t get much exercise in Winter, though; desert pot holes are frozen over or empty, rivers build ice bridges that crack and are carried downstream, and layers and layers of capilene, fleece and wool keep my poor skin warm but suffocating. Which is […]
The 1892 Illustrated American Exploring Expedition
Most explorations into southern Utah and the Southwest became famous. Here’s one expedition that didn’t. The explorers visited 100 archaeological sites between Durango, Colorado and Comb Ridge, Utah—80 of them never before described or recorded, but they had a miserable time of it, constantly underfunded, underfed, dehydrated, with sand in their […]
Switchback- Are Interconnected Resorts A Good Idea?
In a recent issue of UAJ, writer Lee Cohen took a look at the idea of interconnected resorts, or the so called “Interconnect” linking up Wasatch Ski Resorts, Euro style- via chairlifts. The idea once so popular, but largely under the radar for the past several years, has never gone away he discovered. It has […]
