bumpy

We give up.  We are hopeless about guessing how crowded it is going to be for an Alta weekend ski day.  Saturday morning arrived with mild temperatures (low 20s), snow flurries and under five inches of new snow and yet the bus was S.R.O. and there were people in the corral, waiting for Collins to open, when we got to Wildcat base with a half hour before opening.  Inside Goldminer's Daughter, we snagged a spot on a couch, pulled out our books and waited, not even heading outside until the lifts had been open for five minutes and the lift lines had started to move.

With such a small amount of new snow, H opted to go out on his telemark skis and I brought my turny little Salomons.  Alta sends their groomers out almost immediately after the lifts stop turning so the new snow was on top of the groomed trails ... meaning that there really weren't any groomed trails to be found.  And with the hordes of skiers, things got bumped up quickly.  At the beginning, the light was terribly flat which made it especially challenging since we couldn't see the bumps and clumps.  But before long the clouds thinned and moved off, letting the sun shine through.

Sunshine, bumps and H

And then it got fun.  I'm terrible at skiing the bumps but - strangely - I really, really like it and want to get better.  Once the light stopped being so flat, I started to seek out some moguls to play on.  With the new snow, everything was pretty soft too.  More importantly, H was tearing it up off-piste, spending nearly the whole morning on Rollercoaster which was totally bumped up (and, thus, largely clear of most other skiers who don't like bumps).  He is really getting good at tele-skiing and getting into the deeper, softer snow is the next step: bumps are irregular and you have to turn more quickly, so this is a big step up from just cruising the groomers.  After lunch we were on Supreme and did a gully run: H skied that gully, on his teles, at least as well as I skied it on my regular skis.  I am about to relinquish any advantage I had and go back to chasing him down the mountain, no matter what he's on.