nothing i'd rather be doing

Another Sunday, another trip up the canyon to Alta.  This time, with no early morning road closures and no line of horrific traffic, the drive took us under a half hour.  Which meant we were rather surprised when we saw the biggest line we've ever seen at Collins with people waiting for the lift to open.  It moved pretty quickly once it got going, but it still took us fifteen minutes in the corral before we were on a chair and headed to Supreme.

The weather was changeable: cold and partly sunny in the morning; then socked in with low-lying clouds late morning; then bright blue, warm and sunny in the afternoon.  The snow was fantastic, of course.  Quite a lot was tracked out, but still deep and soft and we were even finding untracked stretches into the afternoon.  My legs held up fairly well - for some reason, I have an easier time skiing when it's chunked up than when it's deep new pow - and H took us for great runs into Catherine's Area and the chutes in Supreme Bowl.

Skiing in frozen clouds gives you naturally frosted tips!

After lunch we thought we'd try something new (i.e., not Supreme) and did a couple of runs off East Greeley: Glory Hole and Yellow Trail areas down through Glory Gulch.  I hadn't been over there at all this year yet and had never been down through Glory Gulch (beautiful with the soft snow underfoot and the trees reaching up into the dark blue sky); the first run we took was some of the steepest stuff I've ever skied.

Not sure you can tell, but this is WICKED steep

We went back to Supreme and discovered that they'd dropped the ropes to Devil's Castle (the line of people waiting to make the traverse from the top of Sugarloaf had to be 200+ people long - we did not do that).  We went into the trees and gullies down low, beneath the Apron, and played around in a bunch of untracked powder there - so fun.

By 2:20 p.m., both of us were getting a little fatigued so we hauled ourselves out of the back side and back to Collins base, H unable to resist heading out through the Supreme Bowl chutes, hitting the deep stashes one more time.  We were back at the truck by 3:00 p.m. and cruised out of the canyon under sunshine, on dry roads and with no backed up traffic.  Now that's what I call a heckuva day on the hill.