Outer Planets

This refers to the series of chutes out beyond Angel Food. The further out you go, the steeper and shorter they get. The tree spacing is wide and playful up high, before rolling off into steep chutes and big cliffs. The name comes from the fact that these lines once had individual signs that read Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. These signs were stolen over the years, and since then these lines have taken on new names and nicknames. An important thing to note here is that once you traverse past Angel Food and the first creek you cross afterwards, all of the terrain beyond here exits through avalanche terrain, and the further out you go, the bigger and more serious the paths get. Don’t get in over your head by following the traverse blindly in search of fresh tracks. Traverse past Angel Food and past a big drainage, sidestep up to where an old painting is hung from a tree. This is a good landmark too, as the terrain being the painting is where things start to get serious. The first drop in you come to is a long open glade that stays left of the big gully and eventually leads to some mini slides. The next line over, Planet X, also sometimes called Banana Chute, descends through wide open, Japan-like glade skiing. Pick up a faint right trending drainage that eventually cuts under a steep waterfall into a steep, open chute. Cutting left before this chute will get you cliffed out above a large ice climb known as Driving Force. Ski this out to the Notch Road. The final drop in is reached by traversing a little bit further. Another wide open glade quickly funnels you into a gully. What looks unassuming from above quickly becomes a high walled chute, threading a needle through a prominent cliff band. This is quite fun to ski but also presents the biggest avalanche hazard of the 3. At the bottom, make sure you hang right to avoid having to cross a creek.

Length

0.9 mi

Elevation gain

61 ft

Elevation loss

-1,112 ft

Average slope angle

26º

Max slope angle

42º

Aspect

NNEESESSWWNW

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