open for business

After what seemed like ages (but was really just one non-skiing weekend), we were back to Alta.  Saturday was reasonably temperatured at 26 - 38F, and while mostly cloudy, it didn't even seem cold with the south wind.  I managed my outfit fairly well: I was warm when skiing, and cold on lift in the morning but fine after lunch when it was slightly warmer.

There was plenty of room on bus going up.  With no new snow for several days, people weren't clamoring for freshies.  Alta had almost all its terrain open - except East Castle and Baldy Chutes, and Baldy had been open earlier in the week - and the snow was pretty beat and wind-buffed.  It was still fairly soft, all things considered, except for a couple of scraped off spots on high traffic areas like Upper Big Dipper.  H did one run down Sunspot which was firm and bumpy and hard to see with the very flat light; he said he felt it in his legs immediately.

We started off on Collins and did about five runs there, including Ballroom which was decent but very difficult to see in the flat light.  We had that flat light pretty much all day, except for one or two peeks of sun - we scoffed at the "partly cloudy" claim in the forecast.  We moved to Sugarloaf next, which was a much windier chair, per usual.  Although both Backside and Devil's Castle were open, we saw very few people venturing in.  We did a little bit off the groomers: Razorback was skiing quite nicely and we didn't hit any submarining rocks.

In the Ballroom

After lunch (we saw our favorite cashier, Carrie, back for her winter break), we skied Supreme.  Although we are now resigned to the "new" chairlift there, and we don't hate it as much as we did, we still both miss the old Supreme chair a lot.  Challenger was bumped up with big moguls, although they were fairly soft.  I rated it skiable but was never able to get into any rhythm due to the size of the bumps.  Rock 'N Roll also skied quite well but there were tons of people on it each time we skied it.  3 Bears was also pretty soft and not skied off but it will never be my favorite trail with its cross-fall line orientation.

I skied out to catch the 3 p.m. bus while H kept skiing until last chair.  He wasn't quite as wiped out as he had been after the storm day we had two weekends ago, but he was still tired enough that he went to bed at 7:30.  Milton, who slept all day on the bed while we skied, had no problem joining him - that dog loves to sleep.