may day

May Day, a/k/a/ Alta's Closing Day, dawned clear, cool and sunny. With both anticipation and sadness, we loaded our gear in the truck and headed  back up to ride the lifts for the last time this ski season.  The forecast promised increasing clouds in the afternoon and we decided that we'd ski until those clouds rolled in.  Until then, it was a lot of fun.

The parking lot wasn't full when we got there around 10 a.m., but it soon would be. The Collins lift lines were long, relieved somewhat when they finally opened the Wildcat chair. While yesterday everyone was madly racing to grab the last fresh tracks of the season, today, in the sunshine, 80s tunes blasting from the ski shop, everyone was mellow and just glad to be out in the sun in their costumes. Because there were costumes on this Closing Day: a whole family of gnomes, lots of tutus, tigers-gorillas-bears, disco chicks in zebra print stretch pants, more 1980s era one-piece ski suits than we could count, cowboys, strapless ruffled ballgowns, Daisy Duke denim shorts, Mormon sunbonnets and gingham dresses, teleskiers in tan polyester suits ... it was awesome. Even though I'm not a costume kind of girl, I felt a little underdressed in my regular ski gear.

On Wildcat chair

The snow was amazing for May 1st, a little heavy, but still very soft.  We scored about a dozen runs, some in the Ballroom (not opened yesterday), off Wildcat, the trees to the right of Collins lift, High Rustler.  I was on my old Volkls, which meant I was skiing much better than I was yesterday - which was good, because some of the traverses were starting to get a little sketchy.  H made my day when, halfway down High Rustler, he said, "I still can't believe how steep the stuff you're skiing is" (High Rustler is really steep).  For the record, skiing steep stuff is much less scary when there's like 204 inches of snow on the ground.

When the clouds moved in a little before 2:00 p.m., we took one last run down through the Ballroom and then coasted out on the groomers, turning as many times as we could to prolong that final run.  As we drove out of the parking lot, the tailgaters smiled at us and waved, everyone happy and celebrating the end of the season.

Looking back at Baldy from the Collins angle station

And man, what an incredible season!  H had 55 ski days and I had 40, a new record for both of us.  And we've been so spoiled with the 724 inches that fell, the third second snowiest season they've had.  Later, at the Porcupine, we tried to pick out our favorite days and just couldn't: there were too many fabulous days, and the ones that weren't fabulous were awful damn good, except for just those very few when it was too cold or the visibility was nil.  We are both sad that the ski season is over - actually sad, and missing it already - and have reset the calendar until Opening Day.  'Til then, we'll just have to find something else to keep us busy on the weekends.  Since this is Utah, I'm pretty sure we'll come up with something (not yardwork).