shiver me timbers

Saturday's little snow storm moved out overnight, leaving Sunday bright, sunny and very, very cold: 9 F at the base and 2 F at the summit when we got to Alta.  Also, although the winds were supposed to be "light," they turned out to be pretty strong which just made everything colder.  I wore my trusty Volkls, figuring we'd be playing in the chop to stay warm.

As usual, we rode Sugarloaf for a bit first.  The wind came at the chair head on, making for uncomfortable lift rides but then when skiing downhill with the wind at our backs, it felt almost balmy on our faces.  For our second run, we headed to Chartreuse Nose/Chartreuse Slot.  The wind was blowing all the snow into there and while the bumps were big, I could see them this time and skied it much better.  The bottom part, where it wraps around to join Extrovert was particularly good.  On our next ride up, we saw some folks coming down Keyhole, which looked awfully good, so H did the climb up and skied it.  Not wanting to deal with the traverse into Keyhole, I did a little chute to skier's right instead, which was full of snow.  I rejoined H at the bottom and we skied through Glory Gulch, exiting to the left and coming down Glitch and/or Glatch to finish the run.  Hooray for finally doing some new terrain!

When we moved over to Supreme, we found that Catherine's Area was holding up very well.  We did a few runs off this lift until my toes got very cold.  H did another run in Catherine's while I beelined to Alf's to secure a table for lunch.  With the new snow, Alta was pretty busy this whole weekend, making for cutthroat competition for tables; if we'd been able to hold out until 2 p.m., though, everyone would have left for their Super Bowl parties and we would have had our pick.

We did some great runs after lunch - into East Greeley (which was deep and soft and not pounded with avalanche debris like it was the last time we went in there) and Devil's Castle (which was deep and soft and just opened before lunch).  We finished with a couple of front side runs, including one in the Ballroom which was really quite good, considering all the traffic it gets.  By 2:40 p.m. my poor legs called it quits and we went home to make buffalo wings and watch Puppy Bowl X.