solitude days

There really wasn't much of a plan in effect for our ski guests, other than Chris wanted to ski at least two days at Alta and Andrea wanted to ski at least one day not at Alta.  So when Saturday night brought a new little storm into town, H went into research overdrive to determine where we'd ski on Sunday and Monday, collecting new snow totals/temperatures/winds/weather stats for all of Utah's ski mountains.  As of Sunday morning, the answer was pretty clear: Solitude and Brighton had gotten the most snow - 8 inches to Alta's 6 - and since none of us are snowboarders, it was off to Solitude. 

This turned out to be an excellent choice because the storm also brought high winds with it, and little Solitude is more protected/less exposed than Alta/Snowbird.  Even so, winds were hitting sustained gusts of 40+ mph which eventually shut down the Summit chair back to Honeycomb Canyon.  But not before we skied the heck out of Headwall Forest and the Evergreen glades.  The snow was, in a word, magnificent: deep and soft and so light and fluffy.  The boys were ripping it up, Andrea was skiing really well and even I, who tend to turn into a total spaz in powder, did pretty well. 

After lunch, when they had stopped running the Summit chair, we switched to the Powderhorn lift and went into Honeycomb Canyon through the gates there. We skied in the Black Forest area and, again, it was simply magnificent. H and I hadn't skied on that wall of the canyon last winter: being able to go in through the gates and drop down into powder without a hellalong traverse is lovely. On our last run out, we decided to take the looping Honeycomb Return trail instead of the lift but changed our minds last minute and followed some tracks into the woods ... and ultimately out of bounds, ending up with a long slog down a snow covered private driveway. Oops. At least we weren't the first numbskulls to have done it that day - we followed those tracks all the way back to the lift.

Entry to Middle Slope - luckily not resulting in death

When Monday came, we all quickly decided to return to Solitude, namely because the winds were supposed to be worse than they'd been Sunday.  This time they were running the Summit chair but not the Sunrise lift that takes you there, so our first run was a steep and skied-off approach down Middle Slope (a double-black area where it pays to mind the cliffs).  We quickly learned that it was going to be another ski-in-the-trees day because the wetter, heavier snow that fell overnight (and was falling all day on us, sometimes heavily) was treacherous in the open areas: it grabbed skis without warning, sending Chris into a couple of truly spectacular somersaulting face-plants.  In the trees the snow was heavier, but still soft and manageable.

The traverses into Evergreen were getting a little too exciting - I caught air with both skis on one particularly nasty whoopdedoo - so after lunch we went back to our gates into the Black Forest.  Problem was, we'd been having too much fun and didn't stop for lunch 'til late, and before we knew it 3:00 p.m. had come and Ski Patrol closed the gates on us, despite a last minute dash through the blinding snow.  But there are plenty of trees to ski at Solitude and we found some good ones: Queen Bess to the Honeycomb Return trail.  Tired as I was after four days of keeping up with these guys, I realized just how much I like skiing in the trees; you can make some turns and then stop to figure out which way to go next, really engaging your brain rather than just going on autopilot.

We skied pretty much to the end and then went straight home, all of us tired and soaked to the bone.  After a quick clean-up we went up to Lumpy's for early dinner, learning to our delight that Mondays are all-you-can-eat buffalo wings - and their wings are quite good!  Then home for Chris and Andrea to pack up for their early flight out on Tuesday. 

I think our guests had a good trip - I know H and I had a lot of fun while they were here and are hoping they want to come back again next year.  But it's a good thing they went home when they did: after four days in a row, I was totally out of clean ski socks.