Deseret Peak – With split boarders?

Last Saturday I woke up at 3AM to go ski Deseret peak with Tanner, Jake and a couple split boarders.  Turns out split boarding is SLOW (not the actual riders, but the process).  Luckily Tyler and Joe are pretty cool and like to straight-line chutes. We followed the summitpost.org directions, which had us driving the dirt road towards Loop Campground.  We made it past the first winter gate and were expecting to drive all the way to Loop but ran into a closed gate once we made it to the Medina Flat and the Scout Camp signs.  This forced us to park at Medina and walk the road through the Narrows and up to Loop (roughly 2 miles).  From there, the trail that heads south out of Loop camp ground had us staring at a prominent couloir on the north end of Deseret.  It wasn’t until we were close to the notch that we got a view to the south and saw the Twin Couloirs.  

From there it’s pretty straightforward, take your pick of the two and head up.  The true summit is a short traverse back to the north from the top of the Twins.

The crew heading up

The Stansbury Range to the North from the summit of Deseret

Jake on the summit ridge

Perfect corn from the summit ridge forced us to ski to the SW into one of the many drainages before we headed back to the top of the Twins.   

Jake

Tanner

 Opting for the sun softened East couloir over the still firm West,  we skied/rode a bunch of half thawed wet debris to the base of the chute. At this point, the split boarders said, “we need to just straight-line it and be done with the debris.”  Joe took the lead and did just that.  We all followed, bouncing through the last bit of debris and onto nice Deseret style corn all the way back down.

Jake entering the West Twin Coulior from the east

Joe entering from the west

Tyler mid chute

The trailhead's only an hout from SLC, not too far for a nice change of scenery.