Skiing Football Field in the Meadow Chutes

Fast Facts:

• Start Elevation: 7,864

• Peak Elevation: 97,81

• Daily Vertical: 2,344 (see Strava)

• Distance: 4.45 miles

• Elapsed Time: 1:46

• Date: Jan 29, 2026

This winter is on pace to be the lowest-snow season since 2017/2018, when Alta reported just 388 inches. As of the end of January, Alta has recorded only 143 inches, and it hasn’t snowed since January 8 (21 days ago). Given those conditions, the fact that we’re backcountry skiing at all, and were able to find soft turns, felt like a bonus.

The clear, cold skies over the past three weeks have helped form a soft, feathery layer of surface hoar, providing powder-like conditions on north and northeast-facing terrain. The objective for the day was to find a northerly aspect that had preserved this layer.

Silver Fork is a tighter drainage compared to Cardiff, Mineral, and Broads, with avalanche terrain on both sides that can funnel down toward the skin track. The lower section, however, is protected as it is more heavily treed, as shown below.

Lower skin track through the pines

Skin track about .5 miles into the tour

At 0.8 miles, we turned right and followed a skin track that threads between Ricardo’s Roll and Silver Spoon. This route climbs steadily to the ridge at the top of Greens Basin. From the start, it’s roughly 1.8 miles to the ridge, which took us about 1 hour and 15 minutes. As shown below, coverage on the skin track was thin and extremely slick, which slowed our travels.

Once we reached the ridge above Greens Basin, we turned left and traversed along the broad, open ridge.

Ridge above Greens Basin heading south

As we gained elevation along the ridge, the views opened up to the west-facing slopes of Silver Fork. Across the drainage, Flanagan’s Run stood out, and the photo below captures it perfectly.

Flanagan's Run

And as you continue up, East Bowl comes into view.

East Bowl

We traversed 0.6 miles along the ridge before reaching a wide-open zone known as the Football Field. Most of this terrain faces east, but we were able to find pockets with a slight northerly aspect. That subtle 10–20° shift made all the difference—determining whether the snow held a crust or preserved soft surface hoar.

The upper portion of the Football Field is a broad, open meadow (hence the name Meadow Chutes). Slope angles here are relatively benign, averaging around 30 degrees.

Here is an exact pin of our starting spot.

Wasatch Map

After skiing the top ~600 feet, we cut skier’s left through the trees and found a bit more soft snow just above the El Rollo section. From there on down, it was survival of the fittest—carefully picking lines and praying you didn’t blow out a knee in the low-tide, crusted snow.

I’m looking forward to skiing this zone again with a deeper base and true powder conditions, because it clearly has a lot of potential.