never-ending winter

Saturday was forecasted to be "partly cloudy" and turned out to be pretty much all cloudy with flurries.  Sunday was supposed to be mostly cloudy with up to a half inch of snow.  Any guesses on how Sunday turned out?  If you said completely cloudy and snowing really hard, but warm so it was super-wet, you win the prize!

It wasn't snowing too hard when we first got up to Alta but it was definitely coming down by the time we were on the first chair.  Since it was only supposed to be a half inch, I didn't bother with outer layers that were particularly waterproof.  The snow was piling up on our laps on each chair ride and I could feel the damp permeating my ski pants, and the shoulders of my jacket.  By 10:30 a.m., even my mittens were starting to soak through and I was beginning to wish I hadn't come up to ski.

Supreme chair selfie

But the snow was still really, really good - soft and deep - and it was relatively warm and there was pretty much no one there, so we stuck it out.  Amazingly, we dried out a little over lunch - when H came into Alf's, the entire front of his jacket was a sheet of ice - and the snow started to taper off in the early afternoon.  We did our last run of the season in Catherine's Area (Alta closes the Supreme chair before the others) and the snow was frankly incredible in there: super deep and scarcely tracked out.  What a difference from high season with all the tourists.

Last dance in Catherine's Area for the season

We played around in the gates off Rock N' Roll and did Supreme laps.  Around 2 p.m., the clouds started to break up and we got more sun than we had had in ages - not a lot, truly, but what there was felt great.  And just that little bit of sunshine was enough to impact the snow quality: our last run out through the front side of Collins was slow, sticky and heavy.  It finally felt like spring skiing - maybe winter is running out after all.