"this is your lift, isn't it?"

That's what one of Alta's Skier Services reps said to me as I came through the gates at Supreme for the first time Saturday morning.  He continued, "Every time I'm assigned here, you're here, first thing in the morning."  I grinned because Supreme is my favorite lift and he was right, I am over there almost all the time.  I really prefer the back parts of Alta to the front side; I like skiing Collins and Wildcat when there's tons of new snow because otherwise Collins tends to get skied off and Wildcat's narrow chutes intimidate me when they're skied out.

Saturday was the start of the long weekend/vacation week.  The temperatures were warm (I even wore my spring skiing jacket and mittens), the skies bright blue and the sun brilliant.  Alta was pretty crowded too: not many local badass shredders since there hadn't been much new snow but lots of vacationers and people like H and me who just want to ski.

Just another bluebird day at Alta

Because there hadn't been much new snow, H decided to take his telemark skis which meant that we skied separately - hence my being over at Supreme first thing.  The morning's plan was to meet up for lunch at noon at Alf's if we didn't find each other before then.  I skied only at Supreme, hiking and traversing into Catherine's as much as I could, ducking into the Evergreen gates when my legs were tired of hiking and traversing.  I saw H several times in the lift line but we were always far enough apart that we never connected with each other.

After lunch where we shared a table with some fiesty little ski schoolers (their poor instructor had the patience of a saint), H and I rode up the Sugarloaf chair together and made an afternoon plan: we'd both ski at Supreme by 2:30 p.m. and find each other that way.  While he went off to work on linking his tele turns, I hiked up and way into Devil's Castle, finding some very nice snow, soft and deep.  2:30 rolled around and I started watching for H in the lift lines; 3:00 and no sightings; 3:30 and Supreme lift closed - still with no sign of H - so I moved over to Sugarloaf chair.  I was starting to get a little (a) antsy that I hadn't found him and (b) tired from skiing so long but we finally spotted each other on my second time around on the chair.  We had just timed it perfectly wrong at Supreme, never syncing up our runs.

We skied out, getting back to the truck just before 4 p.m., my longest day on the hill this season by far.  My legs felt okay but I could tell I'd be a little stiff and sore later - a small price to pay for a beautiful Alta day.