off to a good start

I don't want to jinx it but so far the 2018/2019 ski season is looking to be MUCH better than the 2017/2018 season.  Northern Utah had a system move in for the weekend and by Saturday morning, Alta said they'd gotten 90+ inches (of snowfall, not base) which is a good five feet more than we had at this time last year.  There was a little break in the snowstorm action during the day on Saturday and up we went, telling Milton to be a good boy and watch the house.  By "watch the house," we meant "sleep on the bed all day and shed on H's pillow."

The UTA was originally scheduled to start ski bus service on Sunday (12/2) but got their ducks in a row in time to run buses up the canyons on Saturday instead.  They didn't have everything in order - neither H's nor my season Alta passes registered on the scanner and the driver told us to check in at Skier Services when we got to the resort - but it was so nice to climb aboard and let someone else do the driving.  Much less stressful.  We did check in at Skier Services (very busy with people picking up their ski passes) and the girl told us that it was a UTA issue, not an Alta issue.  Sigh.  Whatever - let's go skiing!

Ski patrol was setting bombs off like crazy all over the mountain to shake loose the new snow so Collins had a ten minute delay in opening.  Both Sugarloaf and Sunnyside were open as well, which helped spread people out a little bit, but it was definitely busy and for the first five runs we did on Collins, we went through the singles line each time because of the crowds.  The snow was really quite good, creamy almost, and my skis floated through it even though I still don't have any new wax on them.

It was definitely chilly, though, and high, thin clouds started to diminish the sun's effectiveness.  We switched over to Sugarloaf where it was much less crowded.  Part of this may have had to do with the fact that we had to ski under several snow guns but the new technology makes this much less unpleasant than the old days.  The snow was a little more bumped up on this side - if I had to guess, they groomed here early and then got additional snowfall on top - which meant we had to work harder than just cruising groomers, but conditions were soft so I wasn't bouncing off the little bumps.

I went in for a 20-minute warm-up around noon, while H continued to do laps, then we did a few more runs together on the Sugarloaf side before my early season legs cried uncle.  I went down to Wildcat base and snagged a table at Goldminer's Daughter; H did two or three more runs, enough to get himself thoroughly chilled by the time he met me at the lodge.  Not too chilled for our first apres-ski PBRs tho as we had just enough time for quick beers before catching the bus back down the canyon.