Skiing Hanyak Heaven & Dark Ebony

Fast Facts:

• Start Elevation: 7,267

• Peak Elevation: 10,374

• Daily Vertical: 3,721

• Distance: 8.07 miles

• Elapsed Time: 5:23

• Date: Jan 11, 2026

Hanyak Heaven and Dark Ebony Video

I had been wanting to ski a loop up Cardiff Fork and down Mineral Fork, and the snowpack was finally stable enough to execute the mission. I had peeked into Hanyak Heaven several times over the past year but never felt comfortable dropping in. Yesterday, however, I was skiing GB No on the east face of Mineral and took some photos of Hanyak Heaven. With the snowpack now stable, I felt confident skiing this steep and consequential line.

Alta reported 63" of snow over the prior 10 days, but it hadn’t snowed in three days, and avalanche conditions had dropped to moderate at upper elevations and the persistent weak layer was buried beneath a stout rain crust that fell on Christmas Eve.

We approached Hanyak by skinning up the north side of George’s Bowl. Once on the ridge, we passed Bengal Tiger and then came upon Hanyak. The skier’s right side of Hanyak has a slight south-facing aspect, so it was a bit crusty from sun exposure. I tried to ski more skier’s left, which is west-facing, where the snow remained light and soft. The upper section is treed, with two cliff bands on skier’s right, naturally pushing the line to skier’s left—but at no point do you have to ski above the cliffs. Once in the open, the run funnels into the gut of East Fork. From there, you can continue down East Fork to the base of Mineral Fork, but we chose to start skinning back up East Fork at this junction to save time.

Fortunately, there was already a skin track up East Fork which becomes quite steep at the top. From the top of East Fork, we traversed slightly south along the ridge and evaluated Dark Ebony. I was hoping to find only a few tracks in DE, but there were about six existing lines. This run has a slight northwest aspect, so unlike Hanyak, it hadn’t seen any sun impact, and the snow quality remained light and soft.

Dark Ebony starts out wide at the top with a few tree patches and a steep pitch.

As you exit the upper treed apron, it quickly funnels into a narrow chute. The chute had been skied by others, but the snow was still fluffy. In the photo below, the line is the chute.

After exiting the long choke, we cut skier’s right to ski a clean line down the nose of a ridge closer to East Fork. This section was northwest-facing, much more open, and virtually untracked.

Exiting Mineral Fork is always an adventure. This season, however, we’ve seen a lot of rain at lower elevations, so the exit currently requires taking off skis about a quarter mile from the road.