sparse

Even though we desperately need snow (have I mentioned that? how badly we need snow? Alta is planning to physically move snow over to the groomed trails off the Cecret and Supreme lifts so that those lifts can be opened in time for Christmas - that's how much we need snow), H and I have still been skiing.  He's got ten days in and I've got six; some of those "days" are just a couple of hours but still, it counts.

Part of the reason we've been happy to go skiing despite the extreme lack of snow is that it gets us out of the inversion that has settled over the Salt Lake Valley.  Down in the valley, it's grey and cold and all socked in so that you can't see the sky, while up in the mountains it's been clear blue skies, bright sunshine and easily 20 degrees warmer.  It's been glorious up there and I'm totally conflicted because I so want it to snow, and yet I so enjoy skiing under bluebird skies.

It hasn't been very busy up at Alta either, although since everyone is skiing on the same few trails, it does seem a little crowded.  Because everyone is trapped on the same trails, you're bound to come across some doofuses.  On Saturday, a completely oblivious preteen kid skied into me, not hard enough to knock me over, but enough to knock into my skis and cause me to yell at him to watch where the hell he's going.  On Sunday, H and I had the misfortune to ride the Sugarloaf lift with a couple of total Joeys who, despite the balmy 35 F temperatures and hot sunshine, were both wearing face masks.  These grown men greeted us on the chair with "Bonjour!" (to which H muttered, "The next words out of their mouths better be in French") and then proceeded to talk in English very loudly (to compensate for the muffling of the face masks, I guess) about complete inanities all the way up.  Then, when we got off the chair, we noticed that one of them didn't have poles and neither of them were very good skiers. Sigh.  That's another reason to wish for a lot more snow and soon: so we can escape to the wilds off the Supreme chair where Joeys fear to tread.