stupor tour
May 17, 2009
One of the longest days I’ve spent in the mountains (16hrs 6mins) is going to make for a long blog entry. This is just a warning that this read might take a bit longer than the average of 1:57min per visit on this site.
The Plan: Start at Alta Ski Area and traverse West to Salt Lake City by tagging all the major peaks on the way and exiting out Bells Canyon. This is similar to the classic ‘Super Tour’, but much farther, gains more vert, and is considerably more challenging.
This is a similar variation to a route completed by Andrew McLean, Lorne Glick and others a few years back.

Starting at Alta we skinned up to Sugarloaf and got a tiny glimpse of our final objective way off in the distance.

On big long outings like this every little route decision counts. I chose the snow couloir, which turned out to be too soft.

The ascent of White Baldy was spicier than we had pictured. This became the running joke for the day as we encountered many more 'cruxes' than we had expected.

Picnic on the summit. Jared wanted me to explain that the spandex may appear to be for their lightweight performance, but in fact he wears them because he likes the way they look.
We took a nice 30min rest to dry out our boots, make some phone calls and eat some ‘real’ food.

One of the best things about this traverse is how you get a good mix of skiing, skinning, climbing, booting. It keeps it fun and your always contemplating what will be next and how should we proceed.

Off to Chipman Peak! It was nice to get a break from the sun as it went behind a thin layer of clouds.

The snow was saturated, which made it slow for travel and suspicious for wet slides. We stuck to the rocky ridge.

Two more peaks to go, man this is a long f'ing blog. Thanks for sticking with it. We made a high traverse to the right and wrapped around to the base of Big Horn.
I think I got some GU on the camera lens. I wish I had known I would have licked it off.

At this point Jared did turn to me and say something about fatigue kicking in. I thought it was about time!
With one more peak to go it was fitting that THE REAL CRUX would appear. I had assumed that the ridge from Big Horn to Lone Peak was continuous and we could just traverse it. That is not the case. It’s a rocky ridge with steep ice gullies and stout rock moves.

Then skied out onto the North Face of Big Horn. It was getting late in the day and the snow was freezing back up.

Looking into the huge rock cirque at the wall some friends and I had tried to climb with skis on. Seems like as good of an approach as coming from Alta.

We started working our way to the North summit, but the snow was terrible and we were loosing light fast.

The first melting water we encountered was quickly gulped down. I had been out since the Pfief, but had successfully melted small amounts of snow by putting it in a nalgene and placing it inside my shirt.

Snow turned to dirt and day turned to night. We were lucky to find the trail before it grew dark. Headlamps had been laughed at when brought up earlier that morning.

Jared was an amazing partner for this journey. Thanks for all the trailbreaking and the magic potion. Let's do it again sometime? Maybe not?
Wow, what a crazy day! A classic route with a little bit of everything. With firmer snow conditions this would be a lot less grueling and you could knock several hours off.
I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventure as much as I enjoyed doing it. If this wasn’t long enough for you, Jared has some cool pics on his blog- SLC Samurai-
Tags: Alta to Bells, Beat Out Traverse, I, Little Cottonwood Ridge Traverse, Skiing Little Cottonwood Canyon, Super Tour







































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Dam what a day..do you know what the total vert was?
Absolutely stellar outing Noah! Thanks for the great trip report.
Andrew
A couple things:
1. Don’t you wish your ass was hot like mine? Spandex in the mountains is in!
2. We missed the South Summit of Thunder Mtn.
Great trip and report. Thanks.
Tyler- Jared logged the vert at 8700ft ascent and 12,700ft descent. Felt like more!
Jared-I think the chances I wear spandex are better than the odds I do that traverse again. I’m not man enough to combine the two.
Andrew-Thanks for the inspiration. See you on Foraker!
thanks for the stoke Noah.
keep up the good work.
Can’t believe you found Mit’s cousin (not kidding)
Magic Potion? You two were totally tripping on acid weren’t you?! It’s a performance-enhancing drug fo sho…Great work guys!
[...] in with Backcountry.com Athlete Noah Howell’s blog for a 16hrs 6min tour from Alta resort to Salt Lake City while tagging all major peaks on the way [...]
Very cool guys, you got my attention for sure. Inspiring.