well, somebody had to go to work

And that somebody was me: fortunately, the day after Christmas and the day after that were very quiet so it wasn't that great a hardship.  (Except for the fact that I was at work rather than on the hill.)  Since he was skiing by himself, H took his telemark skis out both days, and ended up feeling pretty good about it.

Boxing Day selfie

There was no new snow but the hordes of vacationers finally came out ("They're all vacationers," muttered an off-duty lifty, "but we'll get our mountain back soon."), bringing the first real lift lines of the season.  The influx of newbies meant that H (a) helped three different yard sales pick up their gear, (b) got his skis run over by a clueless and out of control whippersnapper and (c) got to ride the chairlifts with lots of people from away.  There were folks from Washington D.C., Texas, Indiana, Wisconsin, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Sweden.  The Brooklynite needed how avalanche control explained (the explosions shake loose the snow that might otherwise slide); the Swedes wondered if it was always so busy (nope, mostly just around Christmas).

Now, that's pretty

Even with the dearth of new snow, everyone seemed okay about it, given the stunning bluebird skies.  My philosophy is if you can't have snowstorms, you might as well have blue skies, and it seems Alta's skiers feel the same way.