a really great deal

Today we ventured to the other side of the Wasatch Front to ski at the Canyons.  Although a regular adult day pass is $81, the resort has been running a Pair Pass deal: two lift tickets, two burgers and two beers for $119.  That was way too good for us to pass up, especially since after deducting the cost of the food and beer, we brought our ticket price down to about $45 each.  That's cheaper than if we'd bought them at a ski shop and although we brown-bagged our lunch, we had the burgers and beers (ick - Budweiser, but probably the best tasting Bud I've ever had since it was consumed mid-mountain in the sunshine) right before we left the mountain at 4 p.m., so that counted as dinner.

The Canyons used to be an American Skiing Company resort, just like H's and my former home mountain, Sunday River.  Although the Canyons is ridiculously huge (3700 skiable acres, 167 trails and 18 lifts), we immediately noticed some similiarities to Sunday River that proved the pedigree:  many of the newer trails were widely cut and didn't follow the fall line; many of the trails had a long, flat run-out (although none traversed quite so much as Kansas); and we had to ski under some snow guns.

However, H and I made a point of skiing from one side of the resort to the other - taking thirteen different lifts - just to cover the most territory, and we did notice some striking differences.  First of all, flat run-outs aside, the Canyons has some serious terrain: we did ski a lot of double-blue (whatever those are!) groomers because there hasn't been any new snow since last weekend's storm, so the bumps were pretty solid and the snow was skied into chop, but we went to the highest lift ("Ninety-Nine 90") and skied Lower East Face which was just ridiculously steep.  It was "toothy" in spots (i.e., rocks were popping through) and I gouged one of my skis pretty well, but we were the only ones on the whole trail.

We were the only ones on the trails often, actually.  We'd been told that it might be crowded, what with being a Saturday and all, but a friendly guy on the first lift (by the way, we took three lifts before we even skied: one from the parking lot to the village center; one from the village to the mid-mountain; and one from the mid-mountain to some actual decent trails) advised us to ski to the far left or the far right of the resort, and we rarely shared the trails with others.  We even found untracked corduroy after 11:30 a.m. - crazy!  We never waited in lift lines (another difference from Sunday River on Saturdays).

The Canyons is beautiful, with gorgeous aspen glades and sweeping vistas out over the Heber Valley.  It's definitely a more resort-y ski resort - there were a lot more tourists and snow bunnies than at Alta, Solitude or Brighton.  And it does not cater to the day skier at all: we changed into our boots in the truck, then took the aforementioned multiple lifts to get to ski, and to brownbag our lunch, we had to come all the way back out from the skiing to the village - which nobody does. 

The snow conditions were not the best but there wasn't any ice and so while it wasn't a great ski day (now that I'm a bump-skiing powderhound, I'm a total snow snob), it was certainly a great day with warm temperatures - one of these days I won't overdress - and bright sunshine and mostly blue skies.  Can't complain about any of that.  Well, one Southern belle we rode a chair lift did complain that there weren't enough beginner trails, but I'm okay with that since I can do double-black bump runs now.