“After you die, you will meet God”– A billboard in Salt Lake City.
“Colonoscopies? You’re in Great Hands.”–A billboard in Helper, UT.

Neither true Terminal Cancer nor a little chute in the Ruby Mountains of Nevada are something to joke about. Ok, little may not be quite the right word. Terminal cancer is a perfect, deeply slotted, 1,800 foot long couloir nestled nicely between two large granite walls. All of the rumors of the super light soft powdery snow in the Ruby’s in the back of our minds, we left Aspen around 9:30 PM on Sunday night hoping to ski the line on Monday morning. Rolling through western Colorado, and Northern Utah in the middle of the night is a tiring, uneventful drive. Sometimes you drive 70 miles straight without so much as tweaking the steering wheel. We arrive in Elko, Nevada just as the sun is starting to shed some light on the Ruby Mountains. Dry down low with snow up high seems to be par for the course here. We wonder if there is even enough snow for our line.

It’s time for Breakfast. Joining me on this trip are Anton Sponar, Dave Rasmussen, and Tom “chipmunk” Corson. We walk into a Basque style breakfast place in Elko, one of the few things open for business by now. Delicious skillets, croissant sandwich’s, Denver omlets, and a pancake sandwich off the kid’s menu revive of us only slightly. After finishing and watching Dave be ridiculed for ordering off the kids menu we walk out the door to the still crisp cold morning air of Northern Nevada.

We drive away from Elko along Highway 227 and follow google’s suggestion of a shortcut on Hog Tommy Road. This proves to be interesting as we are the titanic avoiding the ice infested waters of the ponds in the middle of the road. Finally back on pavement we make our way up the Lamoille Canyon road to an orange sign warning of a Large avalanche ahead that has supposedly knocked concrete buildings off their foundations. We drive on by noting the danger. We come upon our first view of our line; Terminal Cancer. I’m not certain what the original “namer” was thinking when they named this line, but it somehow makes sense.

Turning the truck around proves to be something more involved after burying a wheel in the soft snow on the side of the road. After that ordeal we pack up and head out to bootpack up our 2,000 foot roadside attraction.

The apron goes quickly, as do the first couple cliffbands at the base of the couloir dogleg. Coming around the corner we get our first views of the nickle slot that makes up the body of the line. Anton is the first around the corner and simply proclaims “Wow!”

The couloir narrows greatly. In some spots, it is hard to imagine making a turn that doesn’t involve scraping the ice and rock on either side of the chute. To say the least: this is going to be entertaining.

Our general consensus along the way is that the first half of the couloir takes far longer than it looks from the bottom, but the top section goes much faster. It really is just a staircase towards the light at the end of the tunnel though.

Being a north facing, deeply slotted line we were in no hurry to drop in. Finally, motivated by hunger and a desire for beer we dropped in to a mixed bag of conditions. Some turns would be soft and carvable, the next would be a sketchy ice skid, and still the next would be breakable crust. It was enough to keep you on your toes the entire time. Everyone in our group had skis worthy of a big mountain Alaskan Heli-skiing trip. Everyone started with skis in the range of 180-191 but we figured the walls would trim them down to the appropriate size for us.

Our photos were more uphill based, but we seemed to do a better job documenting the down hill via video. Check out this video that Dave Rasmussen put together from Chest cam footage from Anton and I as well as filming by Dave and Tom. Dave is a Custom Furniture maker, you should check out his site.

This is without a doubt one of the most asthetic lines I have skied. I’d like to come back for this line in blower conditions.

We survived Terminal Cancer this time, I guess it isn’t always fatal. I hope it is good to you as well.