early hny

 This isn't a real post but we spent the long Christmas weekend in Moab and are getting a fix on that to share here.  In the meantime, with year's end / the new year fast approaching, we wish everyone good things for the year to come.  Cheers!

best to get above it

 As I mentioned in my last post, there hasn't been any snow in weeks - a stark difference from 2022/2023 when it began snowing mid-October and then, on average, snowed every 3-4 days for six months.  On the plus side, my fifteen mile (one-way) commute has not been particularly stressful.  On the other hand, we are getting inversions in the Salt Lake valley and the air is gross.  Last winter, the storms came in so often that I don't think we had a single bad air quality day.  Good times.

From the Instagram of a local trailrunner

To combat the smog that blows in from California, is exacerbated by the increased SLC traffic and gets caught between the Oquirrh and Wasatch mountain ranges, you gotta get high.  By which I mean get up into the mountains to go skiing / ice-climbing / hiking / snowshoeing.  Or you could go to Park City, but they're gearing up for Sundance and aint nobody wants to get caught up in that.  H went skiing again on Sunday, reporting no lift lines, sunnier skies (although not particularly warm) and two porcupine sightings The snow conditions are the same, the base is slightly less due to evaporation, and it is going to be a RUDE awakening the week between Christmas and New Year's when the entire world (stupid IKON pass) shows up at Alta.

The rest of the family (me, Milton) did our thing in the valley, wincing at the building haze.  We walked Dimple Dell again, contributed to the emissions by doing an IKEA run, then did laundry, vacuumed, meal-prepped for the week ahead and made a multi-bean soup for dinner and the freezer.  The multi-beans were black beans, garbanzo beans, lentils, split green peas and black-eyed peas, for those wondering - sort of a clean-out-the-pantry soup.

glass half full

 If you don't mind skiing eastern conditions, right now is a good time to ski Utah.  (Forget I said that - don't ski Utah.  Ski Colorado instead.)  We haven't had any snow since December 8 and conditions are firm.  Coverage is okay, but the base is disappearing with no new precipitation to bolster it.  So why is it a good time to ski?  Because there aren't many people out right now: it's only the hardcore folks, the ones who have been impatiently waiting for the lifts to start turning since they closed down in April.  There aren't any tourists yet and the more casual skier is waiting until after the holidays.  

It's mostly just people like H.  On Saturday, he got up to the Goldminer's Daughter lodge around 7:50.  Since it isn't crowded, he managed to stake out a corner by the coffee shop, to read and wait for the lifts to open.  Once they opened, it didn't take long for the crowd to disperse.  He pretty much skied right onto the lifts with no waiting from then until after 1 p.m.  More terrain is open - Backside, Supreme Bowl - but he didn't venture into there.  Alta has a lot of rocks and there's just no quite enough coverage yet.

Looking down the Collins chair

Meanwhile, as the day's less-dedicated non-skiers, Milton and I did our Dimple Dell walk, made vegan "parmesan," chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin muffins, vacuumed a little, de-clogged a bathtub drain without upchucking and walked to the liquor store.  Dinner was a red lentil and almond curry made in the InstantPot - it was a terrible, muddy color but was quite tasty.

rockin' the locker

 We have totally scored at Alta this season: the sister of one of our neighbor's is subletting her Goldminer's Daughter ski locker to us.  There are a fair number of ski lockers up at Alta, both in the GMD basement and in the skier services building, but the waitlist for them is over ten years long, and we've heard that they don't even bother adding new names to the list anymore - people just don't give them up.  So when this locker was offered to us, we were all YES YES WE WANT IT OF COURSE THANK YOU!

As I mentioned, it's in the GMD basement, a slightly damp space completely lined with sticker-encrusted lockers, with wooden benches and tables and a pervasive sense of you're local now.  The lockers are long and narrow, with enough room for our two pairs of skis and poles but not wide enough to stuff our boot bags into.  It has, therefore, turned into a bit of planes-trains-and-automobiles to go skiing: we drive from our house to the bus (7 a.m.); ride the bus to Alta's Wildcat base (arrive 7:50); go to the locker, change into our boots and grab our skis and poles; ride the rope tow with our boot bags (because the next inter-resort shuttle is about a half hour away) up to the Albion day lodge where there's room for us to sit and free cubbies for our boot bags; and wait for the lifts to open at 9:15.  Is it kind of ridiculous?  Yes.  But we don't have to wrangle our skis and poles on the crowded ski bus for the whole season and that is just excellent.

Lo and behold

It was warmer but less sunny on Sunday.  I went skiing too.  It wasn't that crowded and the snow was really quite good for early season, but I struggled mightily.  I was way overdressed because it wasn't as cloudy or as windy as the forecast had said.  And I think I was a little dehydrated.  And my legs are not at all in shape after the dearth of hiking this year (note to self: don't sprain your ankle again) - I had to go in and rest!  The most amusing part of the whole thing was that because I was wearing my big, super-warm parka, H kept not recognizing me: two separate times I followed right behind him in the singles line, but he didn't realize it was me and didn't wait at the top like he usually does.  When I finally got his attention, I suggested that we ski separately for the last two hours (so I could go at my own, very slow pace) and just meet up at the GMD a little after 2 p.m.  So that's what we did, and we rode the bus back down, ski- and pole-free and it was glorious.

skiing and doing

 And we're back into our winter routine!  After some very warm days, we got a nice little storm Thursday through Friday which brought over a foot of snow in places in the Wasatch mountains.  Alta now has had 146" of snowfall with a 66" base, although this coming week is going to be warm and dry, which will eat away at that.  The storm was also nice in that the Salt Lake valley got less than an inch, making driving much less anxious for those of us who get anxious about such things.

It did get cold on Saturday, though, so H went up to Alta without me, wearing his warmest parka: it was single digits when he got there and even with bluebird skies, only warmed up ("warmed up") to about 20F.  Alta did have all the lifts open, so after the initial surge, with people stoked about the new snow, the skiers were spread out across the mountain, keeping lift lines reasonable.  H said that the snow was quite good and he skied hard until just after 2 p.m.

It was chilly down in the valley too - I don't think it got about 30F all day.  Milton and I waited until 9 for our four mile walk - the sunshine still felt good, even in the 20s - and then I got busy.  I made spiced candied almonds, peanut butter and pumpkin dog biscuits, a kale/lentil/vegan sausage soup to have Sunday after skiing, and a tasty curry with chickpea and zucchini koftas for Saturday dinner.  I also did a big load of laundry and finished up Christmas presents.  Now that I've written it all out, it doesn't look like that much, but I was actually on my feet all day, only sitting down for fifteen minutes for breakfast and for lunch.  Staying home can be a lot of work - it's not all sitting around eating bonbons!

and the 2023/2024 ski season begins

 Alta was supposed to open for the 2023/2024 season on November 17th.  They didn't, because there wasn't any snow.  When they did actually open, over Thanksgiving weekend, we were in Moab so H wasn't able to be there as he tries to do.  After a full five days of inversion-induced smog in the Salt Lake valley,  a nice storm rolled in Thursday night, blowing out the crap in the air and bringing in snow.

I bought a ten-pack this year so I will be judicious about my ski days (but not quite so picky about temperatures now that I have my lovely heated socks).  So it should come as no surprise that I did not ski this weekend.  H, on the other hand, has basically been waiting for this since mid-April.  He left the house at 7 a.m. Saturday morning for the bus (the UTA is running the ski buses at half schedule again this year).

At 7:14 a.m. he was on the bus, standing room only.  They got to Alta's Goldminer's Daughter lodge at 7:52.  Since non-guests are no longer welcome at the GMD, he had to wait for the rope tow to start running so he could get up to Albion day lodge (the in-resort shuttles between the lodges are not yet running) to leave his gear bag (as GMD lockers are about $15/day).  At 8:05, an hour and ten minutes before lifts opened, the line had already formed at Collins chair.  He got to Albion at 8:30 and settled in for a while:opening was delayed until 10 a.m. so ski patrol could do avalanche mitigation.  

Lift lines at Collins

As you can see, the lift lines were insane, as people stacked up waiting to get on the lift.  The Sunnyside lift is not yet open (whether due to staffing or maintenance is unclear) so that wasn't available to help spread people out.  But by the time H got up the mountain (25 minutes in the singles line, so I guess it could have been worse), however, it didn't end up being too bad - he skied right onto Sugarloaf, and continued to ride that chairlift with scarcely any lines.

As far as the skiing went, well, it's early season for sure.  Not much open terrain, lots of rocks, you know the drill.  And while it wasn't nuking snow all day, the light was very, very flat and visibility was bad.  When he got home (before 3) and started laying out his gear for Sunday, he suggested that I not go - that I wouldn't enjoy the conditions.

Another angle.  Ski Colorado, please

Funny that: he didn't enjoy the conditions much on Sunday either: he got up and on the bus, arriving at GMD at 7:52, and then proceeded to sit in the Albion lodge until about 11:30 before getting back on a bus to come home without having skied at all.  "I'm cutting my losses," he said.  This storm has produced very high avalanche conditions and Alta didn't end up opening until nearly 1 p.m.  Just down the hill, Snowbird didn't open anything but their little baby Chickadee lift all day - too dangerous.

Even further down the hill, Milton and I had a productive weekend.  On Saturday, we did a three mile walk, and Milton got to chase/be chased by a friendly wheaten terrier.  We made three meals' worth of red lentil soup for the freezer, inventoried/organized said freezer, put up the window candles, set up the mudroom for ski season, did a bunch of laundry, put flannel sheets on the guest bed, got started with holiday cards and caught up on blog posts.  Dinner was a new tomato/peanut/chickpea Instantpot stew recipe.  On Sunday, we did our walk, and Milton got to chase/be chased by our neighbor's black lab mix, Packer.  We made chocolate chip cookies, a cinnamon apple galette, vacuumed, finished the laundry, continued to work on holiday cards and even did a Home Depot run where I got hand warmers for skiing and Milton got treats from an employee and pets from a little girl.  Success all the way around!

catching up still: tgiving weekend

Friday was a complete washout as a storm system moved in.  It was cold and rainy off and on all day, pausing long enough for us to visit our favorite bartender to deliver homemade peanut butter and pumpkin dog cookies for her Great Pyrenees mix, Hilde.  (We also stayed for a beer or two).

It snowed a little overnight, leaving a rapidly-melting inch or two on the valley floor Saturday morning.  We connected with some friends from Salt Lake who were in town for a couple of days, taking them out for a late morning hike to Jeep Arch.  They are jeepers themselves and come down to Moab for that, but they haven't done a ton of hiking.  The trail to Jeep Arch was busier than H and I have ever experienced it - including a couple with three Underdog rescues (that Milton was thrilled to meet) and two sweet Underdog foster puppies (that H and I gladly held for a bit to help socialize).  When we dropped into the wash for the walk out, however, we had that to ourselves.  There was more water in the wash than we often see due to the recent precipitation but not so much that we were in danger of soaking our feet.  That would have been unpleasant!

They are SO tall!

Hike stats: 4.00 miles; 1:42 / 2.3 m.p.h. moving average; 1:53 / 2.1 overall

And that was about it.  H, Milton and I did a town walk Sunday morning and then we packed up and headed north.  There was snow on the lawns but none to shovel - score one for the good guys.

catching up: thanksgiving

 It's December 2, 2023, and THANK GOODNESS shoulder season is over and we can finally get some content around here!  H is up at Alta for his first ski day this season - but more on that later.  First we have to go all the way back to last month and our nice Thanksgiving in Moab.

Commemorating the day with a selfie

H took the day before off, and I just packed up a little work to do at home, so we were on the road heading back down to the desert by 6 a.m. morning.  Traffic was fine, the roads were fine and because of our early start, Milton and I were hiking the Slickrock Trail practice loop at Sand Flats Recreation Area by 11 a.m.  Exercise thus accomplished, we set up some lamps (non-overhead lighting - woohoo!) and caught up with some friends at Woody's over a beer.

Our attempt at a group shot

Thanksgiving morning was chilly (low 30s) but sunny-ish.  We had reached out to our neighbors who were sticking around for the holiday weekend and by 10 a.m. we five people and two dogs were at the Amasa Back trailhead.  Along with lots of other vehicles.  Natalie and Lauren had never hiked over here before so we were happy to introduce them to one of our favorite loops: up the Hymasa MTB trail, to the river overlook, and then down the jeep trail.

And then a MTBer helped us out

It was a great day to hike - dry and nice, cool temperatures - and, despite the busy parking lot, we didn't see all that many people.  Enough MTBers to take a group photo for us, however.  Milton and Moscow (Amelia's Underdog rescue) had a great day, chasing each other, snuffling under trees, launching themselves off rocks for dog parkour.

What a crew

Amelia supports the "beers back at the trucks" situation as we do, and we all toasted a nice hike while we watched a number of BASE jumpers get organized and head towards the cliffs.  We didn't wait long enough to see them jump, however, because there was cooking to do!

Heading down

We had invited the girls over for our non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner.  Natalie and Lauren had plans with friends but Amelia and Moscow joined us for an excellent, low-key, no stress meal.  She made a delicious kale soup, spiced with chile peppers she had grown herself, which was a great lead-in to our lentil shepherd's pie, extra mashed potatoes (because you always need more mashed potatoes) and roasted acorn squash.  It was a really good day.

Hike stats: 6.22 miles; 2 hours 10 minutes/2.9 m.p.h. moving average; 2:25/2.6 overall