better on the second day

And on the second day of our 2019/2020 ski season, it was very, very good!  An overproducing storm showed up early Saturday Sunday morning.  It was raining/graupeling at home when we left to catch the bus; it had changed to snow at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon; it was nuking when we got up to Alta.  We timed it just right on the roads too: by 10 a.m., there were reports of multiple slide-offs, including two ski buses.

Because of the potential for sketchy road conditions, I had decided to head back down canyon after lunch, not wanting to leave Milton stranded in the event of traffic congestion.  That decision seemed to have been slightly prescient - not because the traffic ended up being bad (it wasn't, really) but because by noon my second-day legs were crying uncle.  The snow was deep!  And soft!  And really fun!  But it was a lot more work than I expected to be doing on my second ski day.

NUKING (even at the base)

There was limited terrain open, due to both avalanche issues and base depth, but we found plenty to ski, even just doing laps on the front side: Mambo, Strawberry, Spring Valley, Sunspot, etc.  The main traffic patterns got chewed up quickly but all you had to do was go into the trees a little to find fresh snow.  Visibility was difficult as it was either snowing or in the clouds, or during the fifteen minute stretch when it wasn't actively precipitating, the light was very flat.  Still, that 6-8 inches was super-fun and we could hear a lot of hooting and hollering - clearly everyone felt the same way.

I caught the 1:30 p.m. bus down canyon, walking home from the bus stop in a light drizzle.  H told me that he didn't imagine that he would ski past 3 p.m.  I secretly rolled my eyes at this and when I got a text from him saying that he was going to be on the 4:15 p.m. bus, I wasn't surprised.  He was wicked tired when he got home (and would have sore quads on Monday), just barely managing to get through early dinner before crashing.  "I might have overdone it," was the last thing he said to me that night.  True, but completely understandable when the early season snow is just that good.