farewell, supreme

Easter Sunday came in bright and sunny, a beautiful day up at Alta except for one thing: this was the last day of the season for the Supreme lift.  No more Catherine's Area, no more Supreme Bowl, no more short hike into Devil's Castle.  We're not sure why they close this lift early but they do and it gives us sad.

Due to the holiday there was hardly anyone up the canyon and with no lift lines, we got in plenty of runs, despite our relaxed 10:20 a.m. start time.  We did a warm-up run from Collins down to the Sugarloaf lift, then ran around EBT back to Collins to try East Greeley before it got too soft.  It was pretty soft.  I was struggling again (annoyingly), I think because my legs were fatigued from fighting the deep snow on Saturday.

H in Catherine's Area

After that we headed to Supreme and pretty much stayed there for the day, except for a post-lunch run in Devil's Castle where the conditions were holding up nicely even though it was so warm.  The conditions were holding up well in Catherine's too and we did a number of runs there, traversing way, way in where we pretty much had the place to ourselves AND managed to find some untracked and powdery snow.  Awesome-sauce!

On a Supreme chair - one of my favorite places

Catherine's Area closes at 3 p.m. and we were close to (if not actually) the last skiers in there.  Then we did a really fast run (not many turns) in order to get back to the chair for one last run before they closed the chair at 3:30 p.m.  That last run was not fast as we took our time, enjoying the warm spring conditions on a trail we won't get back to until next season.  After that we made our way back to the base and had a beer on the patio, toasting to Supreme and a very happy Easter.