in which we see the sun

It's been nearly a month since we've seen the sun, which is fantastic for northern Utah's snowpack (over 130 inches in January) but tough for getting vitamin D.  For this past Saturday, there were conflicting weather reports: Alta's forecast was cloudy, low 20s and light snow all day, but everyone else (Snowbird, Solitude, the National Weather Service) was going with partly sunny.  Ever hopeful, I picked my layers based on the "partly sunny" forecast.  When Alta's weather turned out to be in teh high 20s/mid 30s, with no wind and truly partly sunny, I felt vindicated.  Plus we didn't have flat light and could actually see what we were skiing on. There wasn't any new snow overnight - although the recently departed system had dropped so much that Devil's Castle still closed - but the coverage was great and the conditions were pretty soft, especially off piste.

We lingered a little bit in the morning and took the 8 a.m. bus.  This was perhaps a mistake on our part as we were subjected to standing room only and congestion heading up canyon.  When we finally arrived at Wildcat base, the corral was full.  Because it was so busy, lift operations were running all the lifts a little slow, keeping people standing in the lift lines longer so that the trails were never that crowded. 

Blue! sky!

Collins was in the sun so we spent the morning doing laps there, while Sugarloaf and Supreme were still in the clouds.  My legs felt really out of shape from not skiing for several weeks, plus I hadn't gone to gym as both H and I were recovering from a nasty head cold.  H played around in the trees,  Chartreuse, Fred's Trees, etc.  I ventured into the Ballroom and Razorback, the latter of which was very soft and very bumpy ... and my legs yelled at me.  The conditions were really nice though and the good visibility gave me confidence to ski a little faster. 

After lunch, we went to Supreme.  We did Challenger and played in the low gate off Rock N Roll, then my tiring legs required that I stick to the groomers while H did trees and chutes. At 2:30 I skied out to catch the bus; H went until last chair because when the skiing is good, that's how he does.