alta done right

Tuesday was when Alta gave our ski guests the goods.  Both H and I were back at work but the canyon road opened and the interlodge was lifted at 7:52 a.m., so J and S headed up there under blue skies and bright sunshine.

The drive up was a little slow because traffic was unusually heavy for a Tuesday - although not surprisingly so given all the new snow.

At first not much terrain was open but, judging from J and S's photos (which I totally stole from their Instagrams), ropes were dropped throughout the day.  Goods were gotten.

S said she wiped out a lot - it takes a while to figure out skiing deep when you've learned to ski in the icy East (and some of us (ahem) still haven't quite figured it out - but she also said it was awesome.

You know what else was awesome?  Having these two come visit.  I think it's safe to say that S is hooked and we won't have to do much convincing to have her come back out to ski again.

adventures in interlodging

So apparently my brother has a habit of bringing snowstorms with him when he comes to visit.  After the 42 inches we got Thursday/Friday, it started snowing again Sunday night.  When Monday morning rolled around, the valley roads were already snow-covered.  H grumbled that the canyon road was going to be a nightmare but he was too tempted by the possibility of deep storm skiing to stay away.  He, J and S got their gear together and headed out around 7:15 a.m. to catch the standing room only bus while I had to go into work.  It took me about an hour: although the roads were messy, there was scarcely any traffic.

J and S were able to use their Ikon passes to get on the bus, which took two hours to get up to Alta, due to traffic volume and snowy conditions.  They were lucky, however, because the authorities closed the road at 10:30 a.m. for avalanche control and, due to the increasing slide danger, never opened the road to uphill traffic for the rest of the day.

Only the finest in interlodge dining

The snow was fantastic.  S fell a couple of times before she figured it out but then they had some great runs.  Very little was open - just the groomed runs (not so groomed) off Collins, plus Wildcat - but it was snowing two inches an hour and started to add up.  Unfortunately, the resort closed at 1 p.m. and all skiers were interlodged at the Goldminer's Daughter.  Interlodged means people have to go indoors (skiers to the ski lodge; residents to their homes) and stay indoors - to be caught outside during an interlodge means fines of around $1,000.  They tried to open the road for downhill traffic only - and three ski buses headed down from Albion without stopping at Goldminer's - but had to close it again immediately because of a natural slide that came onto the road.

At 2 p.m., H texted me that they might not be making it home that night.  I left work around 2:30 p.m. and the roads were clear until I got to our neighborhood.  I shoveled for two hours as there was about a foot of heavy snow; then at 7:30 p.m., I had to go out again to clean up after the plow went by.

The doors were finally unlocked

Meanwhile, H, J and S entertained themselves as best they could for five hours. They managed to score a table, bought a deck of playing cards and dined on crackers and sardines that J had stashed in his pack, and luckily the bar hadn't run out of beer (or chai, for S).  Just before 6 p.m., it was announced that the road was open for downhill traffic only and if anyone wanted to get on a ski bus, they better do it now.  There was a mad rush for the exit.  And even though the bus was crowded, everyone on it was in a pretty good mood since they would be getting home that night.  One woman even shared her Jim Beam and Coke with H after they bonded over Hall & Oates.

They pulled into the driveway a little before 8 p.m., super-happy to be home.  They didn't get much skiing in, true, but they got away with good stories.

january houseguests

It's been a little while since we've had ski guests (since Christmas 2017), and even longer since my brother J came out to ski with us (since February 2014).  This time he brought his daughter S with him; as we understand it, she's been wanting to ski out west for years now - she's twelve - and finally convinced her dad that this was the right time.

They almost didn't make it with weather cancelling the second leg of their trip from Chicago to SLC; instead they went Portland (ME) to Washington D.C., to Pensacola, to Dallas, to SLC.  Unfortunately, their ski gear didn't make the exact same journey, getting hung up in D.C. and finally getting here Sunday afternoon.  This meant that we three didn't ski.  We managed to fill the afternoon after J got their missing luggage sorted out: a walk in Dimple Dell with Milton, a walk up the very snowy Millcreek Road, from the gate closure to the Lamb's Canyon/Mt. Aire/Elbow Fork trailheads, and lunch at the Porcupine.  I had never been up in Millcreek Canyon in the winter before since we're usually skiing and I was amazed: all the trailhead parking lots were full and there were tons of people out, with back country skis, with fat bikes, with dogs, with nordic skis, with sleds.  It was wonderful to see so many people getting out in the winter (and even better to note that none of them seemed inclined to be downhill skiing).

When the sky is the same color as the ground

While J, S and I were thus entertaining ourselves, H went up to Alta.  It was very busy in the morning, the light was extremely flat and the snow had stiffened up overnight.  Nonetheless, he skied opening to closing and was pretty tired by the time he got home.  We all had dinner together - tacos - and then, after H went to bed, the other three of us (oh, and Milton) kept going outside to check out the super/blood/wolf moon eclipse.  It was pretty clear all through the evening - sure didn't seem like it was going to be a big snow day for Monday.

ooh snow

If you follow the northern Utah news or ski social media, you probably know that a big ol' storm came through Thursday and Friday, leaving fantastic inches of snow for us.  Alta reported a 42" storm total.  That sort of snow can cover a LOT of rocks (and help bring our snowpack towards "normal").  Neither of us could ski on Friday but we geared up for Saturday, albeit with a little trepidation about what the crowds would be like on a holiday weekend after a storm.

To try to get ahead of the crowds a bit, we took the bus before our usual bus; it was crowded, but not the most crowded we've seen.  The roads were actually clear but it took a while to get up there simply from all the other traffic.  We got to Wildcat base at time our normal bus (with normal conditions and traffic) would have arrived, but ahead of everyone else stacked up behind us.  Although the lodge was crowded, we somehow found two chairs and took our time getting ready.  The lines extended far past the corral - although not as much of a mob scene as we have seen before - but everyone was very chill and civilized and the singles line moved much faster than I expected.

All smiles in Catherine's Area

At the top of Collins, everyone else seemed to be hiking up the High T so we did a warm up run down the front side.  H immediately dropped into Fred's Trees while I did a combination of groomer and off-piste.  We were both wearing our powder skis and our legs reminded us immediately that we hadn't been doing much off-piste so far this year.  I could tell that H was itching to charge off into all that snow so I suggested that we split up until 11 a.m., and meet up at the bottom of the Supreme lift then.  That way he could ski what he wanted without waiting (and waiting and waiting) for me and I could ski what I wanted without feeling guilty that I was holding him up.

While he did more Fred's Trees and Racecourse and Sunspot and lower High Rustler and some of the Backside, I had planned to go straight to Supreme to ski the gullies.  But Supreme was on a delayed opening and there were hordes of people waiting for it to start up.  Even once they started loading the chair, there were tons and tons of people in line - whereas I was able to pretty much ski right onto the lift at Sugarloaf.  I played around over there, on Razorback, some Cabin Runs, down Chartreuse/Nose and lower Extrovert. 

Snowy trees off of 3 Bears

At the agreed-upon time, H and I met up at Supreme, decided not to deal with the hordes of people and kept skiing Sugarloaf before an early lunch.  After lunch, the Supreme crowds had dispersed so we headed up and went into Catherine's Area.  The initial bootpack up was still too soft so we had to sidestep (exhausting!) and then went into the second meadow.  The snow was very soft but also pretty heavy.  The combination of heavy snow and tracked out/bumped up conditions made us both realize that we were on the wrong skis, despite the depth: our powder skis just don't turn easily.  We stuck it out at Supreme, doing the gates off Rock N'Roll and a run through the trees off of 3 Bears.

By 2 p.m. my legs were done, suffering from the combination of heavy snow and unwieldy skis, so I skied out and caught the 2:30 p.m. bus.  H kept going for a while longer - including the first run of the year down Challenger and a dip into the Supreme Bowl, which was quite bumped up.  He just managed to catch the 3:15 bus home, where our afternoon and evening was taken up by soup- and brownie-making.  The day had been full of surprises - warm temperatures, heavy snow, quick lift lines for the numbers of skiers present - the upcoming unsettled weather may bring us some more.

quickie

While H was travelling for work all last week, Milton and I were at home as an inversion settled in, trapping cold air and smog in the Salt Lake valley.  Up in the mountains it was sunshine and blue skies but down in the valley it looked like the coast of Maine when the fog rolls in.  When H got back Friday night, we decided to escape the inversion and head to the desert instead, just for a quick trip. 
We've always wanted to see what Moab and the Utah desert are like in the wintertime/off-season.  We just have to make the trips weather-dependent: there is a sixty mile stretch between Spanish Fork and Price, where the road winds up, over and down the mountain pass through Spanish Fork and Price Canyons, and that is not a stretch of road to be attempted in any sort of winter weather.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

We were in luck for this trip.  The same high pressure system that brought the inversion to the valleys also brought fair weather so the roads were clear and dry.  It was cold though.  That photo above was the cold point of the drive, bottoming out at -4 F just past the high point of Soldier Summit.  The car's defrost system was sorely tested on that stretch, between the extra cold temperatures and Milton's car-nervousness drooling put extra moisture in the air.  It didn't last long - and the windows cleared right up as soon as we got lower and back into the sun.  It stayed relatively chilly for the rest of the weekend, however, in the 20s overnight and only up to the low 40s by mid-afternoon in the sun. 

Mill Creek

We didn't actually do that much this trip because poor H ended up having to work quite a lot.  But M and I were able to take a bunch of walks (he especially likes to startle songbirds out of bushes).  Quite frankly, it was lovely to be in town during the true off-season.  When we came down over Christmas, it still seemed a little busy with local folk fussing around for the holiday.  This time, Moab was REALLY quiet.  Woody's was closed for renovations and the Moab Brewery was closed for cleaning (on a Saturday!), so we ended up having a couple of beers at Zax - and were the only customers sitting at the bar the whole time we were there.  Weird.

M in motion (he saw another dog)

Sunday morning was gorgeous and clear and as soon as it warmed up just a bit, the three of us drove out towards the Sand Flats Recreation Area.  We pulled off onto a parking area before the park, however, and took a hiking-only trail that H had noticed on his bike ride over Christmas weekend.  We were only out an hour, walking a pleasant trail under a huge wall out to a dramatic viewpoint overlooking Mill Creek, where we spotted more trails for explorations on subsequent trips.  We had the place to ourselves.  It was cool. 

Walk along a wall

Even cooler: as we were driving out, we noticed a woman walking a Great Dane and a miniature poodle.  Both H and I exclaimed, "Is that Amy? That's Amy!" and we pulled over and hopped out so M could have a reunion with his former foster mom.  We chatted with her for several minutes and she gave us each big hugs for taking such good care of her boy.

The boys

And that was it.  We were back in the car, heading north, at 2:30 p.m.  Amazingly, since the roads were dry and the traffic was light (and none of the three of us needed to stop for a rest break), we made it home in 3.5 hours.  As we pulled into the garage, H just shook his head, saying that twice now it has taken him longer than that to get home from a ski day at Alta, less than twenty miles from our house.  I did say it was a quickie this time.

This is blurry because my phone fogged up: I had to

keep it in my shirt so it wouldn't shut itself down in the cold

not a big change

We didn't ski on Sunday, despite the fact that a storm had rolled in to leave new snow - or rather, because a daytime storm had rolled in to leave new snow.  Gunshy from H's recent experiences with 3-5 hour bus rides home on storm days, we weren't willing to risk the potential red snake of down-canyon traffic.  Instead, we used the day to take do laundry, pick up the house a little, take Milton for walks, shovel snow and try out a couple of new recipes for lunch and dinner (with mixed success).

Since that isn't much of a post, I offer you this.  This photo we took on Saturday, with the two of us on the Supreme chair:

And then, digging back through the archives, this photo of the two of us on the Sugarloaf chair, from December 6, 2015:

A little younger, a little less gray, a little less faded - but the same nonetheless.

big change

High pressure settled in during the rest of the week, keeping temperatures cold in Salt Lake Valley and warmer up in the mountains, with no new snow.  The next weather system was due to move into the area Saturday night which meant that skiing on Saturday was way different than skiing on Tuesday: it was at least twenty degrees warmer and the increasing clouds meant flat light.  It wasn't very crowded and we took five runs on Collins to start, only having to share chairs with strangers a couple of times. 

The snow was firm but not frozen on the groomers; off-piste was weird in that it wasn't hard but it felt tough, scoured by the winds into shapes that, were it to warm up and freeze over, would be awful to ski on.  As it was, the best snow of the day was found on the bottom third of Extrovert, with soft-ish and smallish bumps.  We got there by skiing the top of Rollercoaster, crossing through the trees of Amen and climbing out of the gully under the lift towers.  While skiing the Sugarloaf chair, we also did a Razorback/Cabin Run combination and found rocks surfacing on Razorback that had been successfully covered just days before.

Supreme had very little lift line for most of the day so we spent some time there.  East Castle was open - somewhat surprisingly, because the coverage looked a little thin from where we were standing - and while we didn't do the hike up in there ourselves, we did go into the trees beneath it three times, twice from the high gate at the end of the cat track from the top of Supreme and once from the low gate at the end of Rock N Roll.  The ungroomed snow was pretty heavy and it was safer to follow previous skiers' tracks to avoid wrenching a knee.

Supreme chair selfie

We finished up with a couple of runs back on Collins.  Since the base temperature was around 40 F (!!), I had hoped the snow would have softened.  It hadn't, or not as much as I had imagined, and the light was really, really flat, so we wrapped things up and caught the 2:30 p.m. bus home.

cold start to 2019

When the alarm went off on New Year's Day morning, I checked the current temperatures and almost just went right back to bed.  It was going to be COLD.  I rallied, however, because skipping a ski day is not the best way to start a new year.  It turned out to be a beautiful day on the hill and, because it was so cold, the crowds were way, way down; if it had been twenty degrees warmer, it would have been a zoo out there.

There were plenty of empty seats on the ski bus up to Alta.  When we got there, it was -4 F at the summit and 6F at the base.  I had my warmest everything on but even so, as we loaded the first chair, I could feel the cold already seeping in.  I suggested to H that we head straight to Supreme for a run in Catherine's Area, figuring that the hike would help keep us warm.  We didn't go in too far, just to the So Long meadow, but that was enough.  The snow was much stiffer than we expected (and grippy even on the groomers because it was so cold) and two turns in, I was somersaulting into my first fall of the year.  I was sweating by the time we finished that one run so it accomplished what I had hoped, but the snow was tough enough that we wouldn't go back.

That just looks cold there, doesn't it?

I actually managed five runs before I got so cold that I had to go thaw my feet.  One of those runs brought me my second fall of the day: I came over a rise to a short, steep pitch on Rollercoaster, skidded on some scraped-off hardpack, almost went off the groomed trail into choppy snow (where I knew I would go flying), veered back onto the groomer and went down, sliding on my side a ways before coming to a stop.  I popped back up, brushed myself off and continued on.  Two falls in one morning?  Sometimes I don't fall but two times all season!

What a pretty, pretty day

H and I took our time over an early-ish lunch and when we got back out at 12:30, it had warmed up to 8F at the summit and 14F at the base.  It felt great!  We stayed on Supreme and Sugarloaf for the next couple of hours, finding that when we went into the trees off Devil's Elbow and 3 Bears, or did Cabin Runs, or went into the last gate on Rock N Roll, that the snow was very soft and fluffy, having been protected from the wind.  The only time we skied Collins was to ski on out after 2 p.m., grabbing a quick beer before grabbing the 3 p.m. bus.

It was pretty cold at home too, definitely below freezing, but it felt like springtime after what we'd been skiing in.  The cold air would eventually result in an inversion in the valley but the sky stayed clear as the sun went down on the first day of the new year.

new year's eve

I had to go to work on New Year's Eve (Monday) but H went skiing, determined not to let his recent ski bus struggles impact him.  Sunday afternoon's storm had dropped about a foot at Alta but the canyon road was open, with no delays getting up there, and the sun was coming out.  At 8:25 a.m., fifty minutes before Alta starts to load the chairlifts, the corral was nearly full of people anxious to get on the hill and there were no available seats at the Goldminer's Daughter lodge. The crowd would swell into a horde and for the first four runs, the Collins chair line and the Wildcat chair line merged into one giant mass of humanity.

Catherine's Area looking good

The new snow was pretty good and H, on his alpine set-up, skied all over the mountain, including some runs in Catherine's Area and the Back Forty trees.  It was quite cold, which eventually drove people off the runs and into the lodges, and he was able to have a good day, skiing until 2:30 p.m. and catching the 3:00 p.m. bus.  The bus was standing room only but traffic wasn't an issue (for a change).

Back Forty also looking good

We spent a very quiet New Year's Eve at home, in bed early and trying to ignore the fireworks going off in the neighborhood.  (Milton didn't seem to care about the fireworks so that was a big relief.)  Happy and healthy new year to you all!

weekend weather

If you were at Alta this weekend, then you would know for certain that winter is here.  It was very cold on Saturday - around 3 F at the base to start, and below 0 at the summit - and the weather folks muffed it on the forecast; they said it would be sunny/partly cloudy and it was definitely all cloudy, all day.  I pretty much wore my warmest ensemble and still had to go in mid-morning to thaw my toes.  At one point, Martha (from Skier Services) told me to be careful about frostbite since I was getting some ice crystals building up on my face.  Never fear: I emerged unscathed.

I look cold, don't I?!!

The bus was standing room only for the ride up but not so crowded for the return trip; the lift lines were never that long because everyone seemed to be warming up in the lodges all day.  The snow was pretty firm since it was so cold and despite the little refresher storms we've been getting, everything was pretty much tracked out.  Although I really should have been seeking out some hiking or small bumps, we largely stuck to the groomers because there are still a lot of rocks out there.  I did do one run down Chartreuse Nose and managed to tag a rock on the backside of a bump.  Once I got two-thirds of the way down the coverage was better.  The most brutal part of the day was trying to get around the EBT when we decided to ski out: the wind was extremely strong and gusty, driving sharp snow into our faces, setting up big whalebacks on the cat track and generally stopping us in our track.  On the plus side, I was almost warm when we got around from working so hard.

Sunday was cloudy and cold too, with flat light and some cloud skiing in the morning, and while it was slightly warmer than Saturday had been, the increasing winds kept the wind chill pertinent.  The rising winds brought a storm in with them that would eventually drop around a foot of snow and generally wreck havoc with the drive home.  During the day, however, lift lines weren't much of a problem, again because people had to keep going inside to warm up.  H went into the trees by 3 Bears and found a bunch of rocks (our poor ski bases) but when we went into the bottom gate on Rock N Roll, the playground in there seemed well-covered and easy to ski.

In the trees off Rollercoaster

I had decided to bug out early to ensure a reasonable return home time; H, knowing that Wasatch Snow Forecast said that it was going to be a "last chair, best chair" day, decided to keep skiing.  At about 5 p.m., as he was waiting for the bus - that was delayed because no fewer than five cars slid off just trying to get out of Wildcat base to the canyon road - he texted me that I'd been smart to leave early.  Although it wasn't quite as epic a trip as Thursday, it still took him over three hours to get home.  He was pretty annoyed and with good reason, I thought: in the past, there has been a cop stationed at the entrance to the canyon on storm days, turning people away who try to go up without 4WD/snow tires/chains.  There wasn't anyone there on either Thursday or Sunday and thus there were folks up at the resorts in vehicles ill-equipped for the road conditions.  And that right there is why we are so appreciative of the ski buses - we like to leave the driving to them.