converted

Well, it's taken nearly four months but they finally converted me.  What? No! Not to Mormonism - to skiing in waist-deep Utah powder!

The thing is, we almost didn't go.  Both H and I have been battling an icky head cold all week and when the alarm went off this morning, we were like, "Ehhhhh, not sure I want to go skiing."  Then we smartened up, realizing that we FINALLY have snow - like, 80+ inches of new fluffy stuff over the last week, which may have brought our winter back on track - and we would soooooo regret it if we didn't go.  Plus, Solitude was running a promotion where if you bought 10 bottles of Vitaminwater (at $1.39/ea.), and brought in the labels, you'd get a 2 for 1 day pass (at $38/pp - way cheap!).   And I'd already bought the dang Vitaminwater.

So we went, and got up there in time for a parking spot in the front row.  The first run was fully groomed halfway down and when we switched over to the not-so groomed, I sort of squeaked and was like, "Oh dear! The untracked powder is almost up to my knees! I'm an eastern skier and am not sure I know how to handle this."  It's a good thing that I (mostly) figured it out because we had first tracks in knee-deep powder for the next two runs off the Eagle Express lift; then several huge, puffy bump runs down the Challenger trail; then several more knee-deep/puffy bump runs, including some time in the aspen trees (without hitting any!) off the Apex lift.  The snow was just incredible and it gives you such confidence to do bumps without fear of hitting any ice.

Because of all the recent snow, Honeycomb Canyon was closed and they were hitting it with a barrage of TNT to shake loose the potential avalanches.  At noon, however, they dropped the ropes and let us over to the Summit lift.  Honeycomb itself was still closed, but the east-side canyon - Evergreen glades, Headwall Forest, and other glades - was finally open.  We were up at the top of the Powderhorn II lift and dropped into the glades heading down to the Summit lift.  Seriously: I have never skied in that much snow ever. In my life.  At one point, we were in untracked powder up to my waist.  Thank goodness it was so steep (!!) because we would have been totally stuck otherwise.  Notice (1) the snow and (2) how the fall line drops away:

We think we came down through the Milk Run glades (double black diamonds -booyah! and check out the warning signs below ) and at one point had to traverse a bit to avoid the cliffs that were, thankfully, roped off.  It was nuts.  If we stopped, our skinny skis were buried in snow and it was nearly impossible to pull them back out ... so you just didn't stop.  I absolutely had no idea how steep it was because I was so focused on what I was doing; the good thing is that if you did fall - and I did - not only did it not hurt because of the 3+ feet of powder, you didn't slide halfway down the slope because of all the powder.  We took a picture of the glade when we got to the lift but it just doesn't show how steep it was. It was nuts.  And soooooo much fun.

We skied off the Summit lift for a number of runs, taking runs we haven't been able to do before, and it was just a blast.  I made it until just before 2:00 p.m. before my hamstrings started screaming and a massive foot cramp did me in; H stayed out for another half hour, unable to leave the incredible snow behind.  It was funny, too, because later, at the Porcupine (of course) we overheard a couple of dudes complaining that Solitude - which they'd only had to ski because Little Cottonwood Canyon (Alta, Snowbird) was closed for much of the morning for avalanche control - "got skied off in a couple of hours."   Please.  Let me send you to Maine and introduce you to what "skied off" really is all about.  You'll never bad-mouth little Solitude again.

I'm pretty certain that I don't need to ski back East ever again.