twenty-one months

The last time I went skiing was March 8, 2020, just days before the pandemic came crashing in on us all.  

I sent H on up to Alta by himself on Saturday, in part to scope out the ski bus/Albion lodge routine and in larger part because he needed to get up there on some decent snow.  The change from two weeks ago, when the hillsides were all brown, was marked and he actually had a really good day.  The recent midweek storm (that trapped us in our house until 11 a.m. when the plow came - because the 1-3" that we were forecasted to get in the valley turned out to be 12"+) brought a couple of feet to the Cottonwood Canyon ski areas and that made all the difference.  It was cold but the snow was in great shape and he did numerous runs in Catherine's Area, scoring first tracks each time.

That's more like it

Of course everything open was entirely tracked out by the time we got there on Sunday - but the snow was still pretty good.  We hopped the bus around 7:25 (masks required) and got off at the Albion Day Lodge (since non-guests are no longer welcome at Golderminer's Daughter Lodge.  We were early enough that we grabbed a table by the window to read and put our boots on; we nabbed free cubbies in the entryway for our bootbags; we were second in line in the new singles line at the Sunnyside lift.  It's sure to get much more chaotic after Christmas but for now, a good start!

About to score some tasty pow

It was a beautiful day - cold, but warming to around 30 F by noon, and sunny.  We went directly to the Supreme chair and for our first three runs there, it was like we had it to ourselves.  It being my first day back, I stuck mainly to groomers.  H was happy to have someone (me!) to talk to in the lift lines and on the chairs, so he skied with me for most of the time, except for a run down No. 9 Express - not entirely successful as it had set up some from the day before - and when I had to go in to warm my toes for a bit.  We switched to Sugarloaf and then moved to Collins.  Things started to fall apart a bit then: the Collins lift was having mechanical or power issues and kept shutting down; the Sunnyside lift was too eventually, which took some finagling to move around the resort.  We did a run on the Wildcat lift and then made it back to Sugarloaf for some more runs.  

My ski pants still fit!

We called it quits early and jumped on the bus back down to the valley.  We'll need to do some fine-tuning of the logistics - part of why we left early was because we were hungry and Alf's no longer allows outside food - but it looks like we can make it work for ski season 2021/2022.