warm and windy

There has been very little snow recently and when we went skiing Saturday morning, H remarked that it's been years since Alta has been this skied out.  It was warm (ranging from 29 to 43 F such that I didn't even wear my boot covers), cloudy and blustery.  Off piste was crusty and hard, never really softening up; steep sections, like Challenger, were so scraped off that even H side-slipped the whole way down.  The groomers were okay, and down towards the base the snow got soft and a little slushy.  With all the clouds, the light was very flat - you'd think we'd be used to that by now.

Crowd-wise it was about medium.  The lifties were running Collins a little slow so it took a long time to get through that lift line.  It looked to be lots of tourists/Icon pass-holders and mid-range skiers on the hill ... because all the good local skiers think the conditions aren't worth it.  H and me, we'll ski on anything.

I look like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man in this jacket

We stuck to Collins for the morning, cruising groomers, alternating between Mambo and Main Street.  H had the good idea to go to lunch a little early lunch (I think he got hungry), which meant that the Supreme lift line had pretty much cleared out when we went back out.  The wind picked up in the afternoon, however, and the temperature dropped as the day wore on.  After a couple of Sugarloaf runs, we were bored with the groomers, as well as getting a little chilled, so we went back to the Goldminer's Daughter and had a couple of beers (Loose Boots IPA in cans) before catching the bus down canyon.

For those of us who ski Alta all the time, this was sort of a meh kind of day.  But even with the meh conditions, we still saw tourists who had never been to Alta before, oohing and aahing over the scenery, just loving the place.   That's good for us to see as it reminds us not to take Alta for granted.