Soldier Area Backcountry Trek

This trek was originally planned to be an ascent and ski/board descent of Mount Borah, but weather conditions on Borah had produced dangerous avalanche conditions. In spite of my reputation amongst friends and family as being somewhat of an adrenaline junkie, I’m not into trying to best Mother Nature. With this in mind, we abandoned the Borah idea and chose “Plan B”, which was a trek into the backcountry above Soldier Mountain Ski Area. We felt this was a pretty sweet consolation prize.

I have been wanting to ski some of the couloirs off the North Smoky Dome peak, but we didn’t go after those in this trip. The same storm that had made Borah too high of a risk had also dumped 6-12 inches of snow on the Soldier Mountains and the upper peaks also had some obvious wind loading. Because of this, we chose an objective that I called Point 9309, (that is what the reading on my GPS unit was at the high point). This little mini-peak was just below and due east of the summit of the North Smoky Dome peak. As seen in the video, we enjoyed some great powder skiing on low-angle slopes that posed minimal risk.

We had a great adventure, stayed safe and had fun. Mission accomplished!!!

Here are the Video Highlights, (May not be viewable on a smart phone device):

GPS Data: