decisions were made

 After the driest January and February on record (for Utah - and wow, is that not good), the state finally got a bit of snow.  Everyone got excited about it, with the possibility of 2+ feet, and a substantial drop in the very mild temperatures we've been having.  It was supposed to snow both Saturday and Sunday: warmer and wetter on Saturday, quite cold on Sunday.  I was only planning to ski one day and I was waffling: should I go Saturday, with the warmer temperatures but the likelihood of getting soaked - my ski gear is all rather old and not so much waterproof anymore, although I did hit it with a waterproofing spray - or go Sunday with forecasted negative windchills and very cold feet.

I decided to be a homebody with Milton on Saturday (long walk, laundry, changing burned out lightbulbs, chocolate chip cookies, prepping for chili on Sunday and making a new tofu schwarma with roasted za'atar broccoli for dinner) while H went up to Alta.  It was very busy, with everyone just ravenous at the idea of new snow: the bus was SRO but since the roads weren't snow-covered, the drive up only took 15-20 minutes longer than usual.  It barely snowed while he was up there, just a couple of inches, and it was so warm that it was basically raining down low.  Notable quote: H was skiing singles and on one lift ride, the lifty added him to a group of three, saying, "You guys get to ride up with the best mustache on the mountain," and once on the chair, one of the guys said to H, "You must be a local with that mustache!"

Now locked into my decision to ski Sunday, I checked the forecast which was now saying, 6"+ overnight and possibly 7"+ during the day, high 18 F, windchills around -4.  I was waffling: I figured out what to wear but then brought my powder skis up from the basement, figuring that if they got a foot, I'd take those, but eight or under would go with my Salomons since that amount would get churned up quickly.  In the morning, Alta had only gotten six inches in the last 24 hours, and the daytime amount was dropped to no more than 3-4 inches; we'd only gotten enough at the house to cover the grass while in town got a whopping ten inches, knocking out power in some spots.

We got on the 7:20 bus and it was the busiest it has been all year; we hit the red snake of slowed/stopped traffic well before reaching the mouth of the canyon; with so many people getting off at Snowbird, we were about forty minutes behind schedule.  We were still ahead of the game, however, as a vehicle behind us slid and blocked canyon traffic: it took some people 2.5 hours to get up the canyon while those of us who had gotten off early were THRILLED at having no lift lines until well after 11 a.m.  That was fantastic.

So fluffy here

The new snow was fantastic too - super light and fluffy - although it really was fluff on crust, as you quickly cut through it to the hard, scratchy old snow below.  When we went into Catherine's, the top part skied great - H thinks it was the deepest he's skied all year (sad) - but we had to work our way around giant, frozen bumps towards the run out.  We did a couple of low tree runs through a couple of the gates on Rock N' Roll (pretty nice), then transitioned to Sugarloaf.  I went in to warm up for fifteen minutes, then we did a run down Chartreuse (fluff on crusty bumps) and moved over to Collins.  The visibility was worse there, as it was snowing slightly harder, so I retreated to Sugarloaf while H stuck it out on the front side for several runs.

We found each other at the Sugarloaf base just before 1 p.m.  I skied out with very cold feet and a crick in my neck from bouncing off a bump wrong while H did two more runs.  We caught the 1:30 p.m. bus down and, the road being clear and even dry towards the bottom, got delivered back to the park-n-ride a couple minutes ahead of schedule.  I had been regretting deciding to ski Sunday until I actually skied: it turned out to be warmer than I expected and the snow was fun - no regrets required.