last day for supreme this season

We almost didn't go skiing Sunday: it stared to rain just as we started up the canyon and we really don't like to ski in the rain.  But Sunday was the last day that the Supreme chairlift was going to be open for the 2012-2013 season and we couldn't miss that.  About halfway up Little Cottonwood Canyon the rain changed over to snow, and by the time we pulled into the sparsely-populated parking lot at the Goldminer's Daughter (seriously: it was 10 a.m. and the lot was only a quarter full), it was blowing pretty hard.  We figured that most of the spring-breakers had probably headed home and the stormy weather (snow and graupel off and on all day) was keeping the locals away - more room for us.

Pretty steep in those Supreme Bowl chutes

It was immediately apparent that we'd made the right call to ski.  The groomed trails were in fantastic condition, soft with a thin coat of heavy snow on top.  We ended up doing two runs on Sugarloaf first thing because the conditions were so good, but H actually got hit on our first one.  We were on Devil's Elbow (blue groomer) and this kid, maybe 10 or 12 years old, came flying down off the knoll from the left onto the trail.  He didn't slow down at all, or try to turn out of the way; H saw him coming and tried to turn away but the kid smashed right into him, knocking H out of both of his skis.  By the time I got there, both of them were picking themselves up off the trail.  The kid was very apologetic and helped collect H's poles.  H was the model of restraint and just said to him, "You really need to slow down when you come onto the trail like that."  H was okay, despite landing on the shoulder and knee that he hit on that crash with our ski guests last month; we sort of hoped that kid might wake up Monday morning with some bruises though.

Final Supreme self portrait

After our second run on Sugarloaf - without further incident - we moved over to Supreme and stayed there for the rest of the day.  The conditions really were very good, soft and heavy.  We had some great runs, including a fantastic one in the chutes of the Supreme Bowl and Catherine's was excellent.  I did two runs in there, getting bounced around a bit with the heavy clumps; H ended up with five Catherine's runs, which did a number on his legs.

There's still a fair amount of snow up there

The Supreme chair closes at 3:30 p.m. and we took our last ride up at 3:28 p.m.  As we skied down past the lift for the last time, the lifties were hanging out by the big CLOSED sign, enjoying the beer donations that they'd received from skiers throughout the day (we had contributed a couple of PBRs to the cause, naturally).  Our legs were pretty much toast at this point so we waved goodbye and skied out, sad that we wouldn't get to ski Supreme anymore but grateful that we still have another couple of weekends to do the rest of Alta.

So sad!