TRAILBLAZER
Moab river guide Carl Dec expands into backcountry skiing. BY NICK COMO
T
he Y-Couloir. Coalpit Headwall. Mount Superior. These are the crown jewels of backcountry skiing in the Wasatch. Like most skiers, I’ve gazed at these faces and chutes for years—sometimes before I even knew they had a proper name, let alone had been skied. I learned more and more about this terrain from reading the venerable Chuting Gallery by Andrew McLean and from watching locals like Noah Howell, who I’d routinely bump into at the Alta Peruvian Lodge bar (the P-Dog), through his many Powderwhores films. In the past decade, I’ve ticked a few runs off my list, a lucky side perk of being an outdoor writer and maintaining a loose connection to the local ski industry.
18 | Vamoose Utah • Spring 2017
Adventure in all directions
Carl Dec
Lacking competent friends to help arrange excursions to these challenging and difficult-to-access lines, my options to earn a safe introduction to these iconic runs were severely limited. Even if I had the funds to drop on heli-skiing, many of these gems are inaccessible to ’birds, whether due to terrain or wilderness restrictions. So, what’s a ski bum to do? Over the past decades, a few guiding services sporadically offered tours into some of these backcountry areas, but the U.S. Forest Service is always hesitant to allow more permits. Enter Carl Dec and Red River Adventures. If you’ve ever wanted to take a raft down the whitewater of the Colorado River beneath the Fisher Towers and climb sandstone spires, or canyoneer through the narrow crevices of Arches National Park’s Fiery Furnace, a call to Southern Utah’s famed Red River Adventures is the only one to make. As the head honcho for Red River team, Dec recently expanded from his usual desert haunts outside Moab to offer guided backcountry skiing and ice climbing in the Wasatch mountains this winter. I spent a week playing phone tag with Dec, receiving voice messages from him along the lines of: “Hey, Como! Sorry I missed ya. I’m just getting back from an ice climb. The GWI in LCC is in, and it’s great. So, you wanted to talk about something for an article? Give me a call back tomorrow. Oh wait, I’ll be out skiing from 5 a.m. ‘til about noon—so sometime after that.” When I finally caught up with Dec—who, it turns out, is a New York-transplant like myself—he briefed me on Red River’s new endeavors with enthusiasm and optimism. “We’ve lined up some of the world’s best ski guides including Noah Howell of Powderwhores [named one of the 50 Icons of Backcountry Skiing] and Andrew Mclean [author of The Chuting Gallery] to lead these amazing tours,” he says, noting his guides have the most experience in this terrain. They’ll guide their clients to experience the best snow, he says.