that's an improvement

Saturday's storm lingered overnight and brought another four inches to Alta.  A storm total of 7" is normally not that big a deal in northern Utah but after the very dry November and December, seven brought the stoke.  But first we had to get up to it.

It was sleeting Saturday afternoon and evening, something that is never remarked upon back east but which is an uncommon occurrence out here.  The streets and roads had all been pre-treated and weren't slippery on Sunday morning.  The driveway up to the park-n-ride at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon - the park-n-ride at which the later ski buses stop - that had not been salted at all, however.  Our 7:55 a.m. bus was the first to attempt it but a passenger car had gotten stuck, wheels spinning on the ice.  Once that guy had gotten out of the way, our bus struggled mightily to make it up the incline, at one point sliding backwards down into the canyon road.  H volunteered to try to stop traffic so the bus could maneuver its way up; he was subjected to quite a lot of rude yelling by drivers unwilling to wait for even a minute.  But our bus finally made it up the incline to pick up the waiting riders and even though we had been delayed over a half hour, we still got up to Alta before they started loading first chair.

Patrol-triggered avalanche debris in the Ballroom

I must admit, after the snow drought we've been having, that 4-7" of new snow was lovely to ski on.  It got skied out really, really quickly but even then it was soft and not nearly as heavy as I thought it would have been given the warm temperatures on Saturday.  We did several runs on Collins to start and I thought the snow was pretty good.  H went into the Ballroom when they dropped the rope, reporting a decent run even with beginners freaking out and stopping on the traverse.

It was a gorgeous day, mostly sunny but with morning temperatures in the high teens, and we enjoyed being able to see after the terrible visibility/very flat light the day before.  When my toes started to get cold, we switched over to Sugarloaf which has more sun exposure this time of year.  The snow was staying soft there too and bumping up on the sides of the main groomers.  H gave Razorback a try but said it was pretty spotty with all the rocks.

So nice to see snow in the mountains again

After lunch, we did three runs off Supreme: Rock N Roll, then out through the trees at the low gate where we'd taken N and T.  It was absolutely fun in there, the low angle trees protecting the snow pretty well, although I managed to collect a noticeable gouge from hitting a rock.  All things considered, the snow stayed in pretty good shape into the afternoon, when it finally started to deteriorate, getting skied off in the high traffic areas.  Corkscrew was particularly bad (as it usually is in the afternoon, even in good snow years), which we learned when we skied out through Collins. 

When I went in to change out of my boots around 2:15-ish, the Goldminer's Daughter patio was full of people soaking up the sun; when H came in just a couple of runs later, the patio was empty as the sun had already gone down behind the mountains, leaving things much chillier.  Our bus ride home was much less eventful than our ride up (thankfully).  The forecast is starting to look a little bit snowier which is good because even though Sunday was a good day, we need an awful lot more snow to bring us up to average.  My little skis can't take the abuse for much longer!