Suicide chute is the obvious slice dropping east off the southern ridge of Superior. This prominent peak rises to just above 11,000 ft directly across the road from Alta, and was the first line on my list when I rolled into little cottonwood canyon towards the end of February.
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| Superior Proper Suicide chute on lookers left |
We were lucky to get hit with storm while in the Wasatch, and managed to grab second tracks down this beautiful line.
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| Topping out |
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| Psyched! Photo: Chris |
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| Rocks, paper, scissors for first drop...I won:) Photo: Chris |
Fortunately Suicide doesn't get much sun, and the snow stayed light and dry for us. Different story for other aspects. Upon reaching he apron of the chute we looked up at Superior proper, and to our surprise found ourselves standing in the debris pile of a wet slide. We were first on the scene and I immediately pulled out my transceiver and flipped it to search mode, hoping upon hope that it would pick up nothing. I trudged through the wet, concrete-esqe balls of snow with my breath held in nervous anticipation. After checking the whole of the debris pile, nothing. Whew!
Skiing to the bottom we met a ranger, and came to find that it had been skier triggered, and, luckily, the skier had been brought for a ride over the cliff bands above and had managed to stay on top and ride away unscathed.
"Low" danger rating doesn't mean "no" danger and this slide made that very evident. Someone came to learn a lesson the hard way that day, coming to show that the avi bulletin really is only part of the equation...
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