there's still a lot of snow up at alta

H and I dusted off the snowshoes Saturday afternoon, heading up to Alta to tromp around for a couple of hours.  As we headed out, a couple of groups of people were skiing out, having skinned up to Devil's Castle for a full morning of skiing.  They reported good conditions and lots of snow.  Down low on the bunnyslopes there was a family on nordic skis and several kids on alpine skis and snowboards were building a kicker.  We weren't the only ones enjoying post-season Alta.

H heading across Patsy Marley

We don't snowshoe very often and it took us a while to get situated: H fussed with his snowshoe straps while I had to zip the legs onto my shorts because every step was throwing snow onto the backs of my legs and down into my boots.  We finally got everything sort out and headed up Patsy Marley, crossing over to Sunnyside and up to Alf's.  We kept going up, under the Cecret chair to the base of the Supreme chair, then continued on, up lower Big Dipper to the bottom of Rock and Roll.  It is truly amazing how these green/blue runs seem so flat when you are going down them on skis ... but they're really steep when you're walking/snowshoeing up them.  After about an hour and a half we headed back down, half-glissading (still on the snowshoes) through the gully that runs past the cabins, and it only took us a half hour to get back down to the truck.

Bottom of Rock and Roll (lots of snow still)

The weather kept holding - blue sky and sunshine with a few passing clouds - so we changed out of our soaking wet boots and socks and perched on the truck's tailgate for a couple of PBRs.  We must have looked like we knew what we were doing because several tourists who'd driven up to take a look at Alta wandered over and started chatting with us, asking about the resort.  Even though we're awkward on snowshoes, it was a very nice afternoon outing, getting us up into the canyon and back on the slopes.