Foothill Freak's Backcountry Skiing Blog

Toured from Helmut’s chalet in Big Cottonwood today. We arrived at the high ridge just in time for the winds to pick up. They were’nt that bad though. Only once did I really need to do the spread-eagle-crab-walk to keep from getting blown over. The storm front sounded like a freight train blasting through the [...]

Went up in Little Cottonwood today and made some big plans in the parking lot. Then, as we got over 9000 feet, the trailbreaking became monumentally difficult. Early on, someone up front wading through the snow said that they’d prefer to have hand paddles instead of poles. At first this seemed like an exaggeration, but [...]

Skied the foothills this morning for a quicky before work. Helmut and I met up at 6:45, we skied 5 runs, and I was at work by 9:45. Ahh, the joys of minimal commuting and minimal approaches.

Sometimes the most beautiful and mysterious places are right outside your back door, right under your nose. When something breaks your routine and you finally notice these places, you wonder how you’ve missed them for so long. The approach today was not for the faint of heart, but being somewhere new made rounding every corner [...]

Skiing is a wonderful way to learn geography Today my boss came into my office and asked, “did you hear about the volcano in South America that erupted?”. If I had heard this question a year ago, it would have been a relatively meaningless experience. I would have been interested momentairly. I would have read [...]

For better or worse, times change. The Original FoothillFreak website was lovingly coded by hand, each page, i tell you. It still looks good too. Check out the old school foothill freak blog for adventures from 2000 to 2007