well, we got a little bit of snow

The meteorologists out here got everyone all excited about the big storm that was moving in for the weekend, promising snowfall totals in the mountains anywhere from 16-30" to 20-37".  When we got up Saturday morning and read that Alta had gotten 5" overnight (instead of the 7-10" they'd said), we were underwhelmed.  Still, any new snow is good snow and we headed up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  I had a heated internal debate, trying to decide which skis to take: my normal cut-off for the Rossignols is a minimum of eight inches since any less than that tends to get chunked up quickly and I prefer my nimble little Volkls for that.  The Rossignols just float in deep snow but they don't make small, quick turns and they shudder and complain on groomers unless I manage to heel them way up on edge.  I ended up taking the Rossis instead, hoping that we could maybe find some deeper stuff to play in; I only ended up wishing I had my quick-turning Volkls 75% of the time.

It was pretty busy so we rode the singles line up Collins and hightailed it to the Supreme chair, where we stayed for most of the day.  We spent a lot of time in Catherine's Area, either hiking up to the upper traverse or taking the traverse across the top of Supreme Bowl, alternately going in deep where there hadn't been as much traffic and playing in the trees at the near edge.  The snow was okay but we hadn't gotten nearly enough to soften up the bumps - much less fill them in - and the snow under the five new inches was quite firm.

No blue skies today, just flat light

Another drawback was the extremely flat light.  It started snowing again after lunch but for the morning it was quite difficult to see, especially on any groomers where any dips or contours were simply unseeable.  Still, we persevered until nearly 3:00 p.m. and then drove home out of the falling snow, keeping our fingers crossed that the storm up there would start nuking so we'd have something fun to play in the next day.