Greens Basin

When the UAC avalanche rose (December 17, 2015) looks like this:

Rose for December 17, 2015

…one should probably just stay in resort but if you are going into the backcountry, then you could pick a spot like Greens Basin. Why? Because not only can you find low angle anchored terrain in there but if you pay a lot of attention to your route selection, you can access it without exposing yourself to a lot of avalanche terrain. West Bowl could be a choice too except that you would probably not want to expose yourself to skinning up the Alta south facing knowing that a natural broke the same day off of Superior all the while this rose telling you, among other things, that south facing above 9,500’ is red!

So we went to Greens Basin. The skiing was probably one of our worst ones so far. Two feet of fluffy powder offers only very marginal cover of rocks and fallen trees! So the ski was kinda heinous but the tour was still outright glorious. It was 2°F at Spruces trail head, there was a crisp white cover, the spruces were covered in snow, and we had to break a deep trail all the way up. In short it felt like a real legitimate, full on winter day!

Greens Basin with Mike in te distance.

Mt Raymond from Eastern Days Fork.