I mentioned that winter has arrived in Utah: not only has it been 10-15 degrees colder than "normal," recent storms in the northern part of the state have brought more snow than we've seen this early in years. Big Cottonwood Canyon got hammered, inspiring Brighton and Solitude to both open Veterans' Day weekend. Alta and Snowbird held out for another week, and yet their 2022/2023 season opening days were still weeks earlier than they have been recently.
Alta opened November 18 and H was there, as he likes to do. The ski bus doesn't start for a while yet so he had to drive up, but things have been dry since that last wonderful storm so the road wasn't an issue. He went to Wildcat base and was first in line to pick up his season pass. I was at work and was kept updated by text.
The new Sunnyside lift is still under construction (completion by Christmas, they hope) so they were running the Collins, Wildcat and Sugarloaf lifts. At 10:23 a.m., he reported: "Very cold. Snow is pretty good for before Thanksgiving. Especially before Thanksgiving." An amazing amount of terrain was open, including the Ballroom (!), Backside (!!) and the High Traverse (!!!). He did find that the snow was better on the Sugarloaf side: there's a lot of manmade snow on the front side, especially in the high traffic areas, and the natural stuff is just better. H skied until after noon, then headed down with cold feet.
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