Three more contentental divide blogs:

http://www.divideride07.blogspot.com/
http://www.jamieandlee.com/
http://www.continentaldivideride.com/

Tour of the Snow Cave

Yes, we know that it is not an igloo! From here on out, I will refer to the structure as a snow cave.

We had originally planned to share this adventure with our friends Kevin, Heather and Gardner. Unfortunately, these lovely folks had something come up and couldn't make it. If you guys are reading this, the cave is still up there, let's go up and share a meal together, eh?

Here is a little video of the cave that we put together. This was right before we snowboarded down the trail and at this point we were quite exhausted.

Snowboarding from the Snow Cave!

Here is a fun video we put together yesterday. We snowboarded from our snow cave, down the Butler Fork trail and back to the car. Riding with a full pack is a considerable amount more difficult than not, by the way. The same goes for bridges and ravines, oh my! It was a very fun run, though.

Enjoy!

Our Igloo and snowboard

Heather and I decided to go build an igloo and spend the night up butler fork in big cottonwood canyon, we built our igloo on the side of a hill near the dog lake / desolation lake fork. Temperature at time of departure from SLC was 61 degrees, we used the air conditioner on the drive up the canyon... the snow was wet, and heavy, classic spring conditions.

Heather making her way up:


Me in my glacier goggles, it was a nice and sunny day, temps in the low 40's very little wind:


Really wet snow:


Self shot of Heather:


Heather going over the bridge:


Our destination! Dog lake to the left, Desolation to the right:


Snow pile done, starting to dig out the inside:


Heather digging out the Iglo:


All done! About the size of a good 3 man tent! We laid down a tarp, zipped our bags together and slept on two full size thermarests for insulation:


The view from inside:


Lunch!


We emptied our bags in the Igloo and retreated back to the car... to get our snowboards and snowboard gear:


I took the helmet cam with us, and recorded the descent back, quite a ride! I'll get some video footage together in the near future... :D