After the Thanksgiving weekend, northern Utah played host to two good storm systems that brought enough to the valleys that it messed up a couple morning commutes. More importantly, we got some terrific snow in the mountains. The Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon resorts both filled up so ski season is definitely on, although the ski bus still isn't running yet.
On Saturday, H skied his alpine set up and on Sunday he did telemark. The Sunnyside lift is still under reconstruction, which means that everyone trying to get out of the Alta base areas was standing in the Collins lift line; H sent me a photo Saturday morning, saying that he was standing uphill of the Wildcat lift, waiting to load Collins.
The snow was good, though, especially Saturday, with the new inches refreshing the decent existing base. There were a couple of rocky spots - on Thursday, numerous resorts had lifts on wind hold (not that common out here) and Alta ended up closing early due to 95 m.p.h. gusts. That'll shift some snow for sure.
It was quite windy though, with the second storm system moving out, and on Sunday the visibility was terrible: flat light and snowing. H reported hardly anyone riding the Sugarloaf lift either day as that lift is very exposed and positively miserable in the wind. H covered some ground, however, getting into the trees and out into Catherine's Area. After so many recent years with sparse coverage, it's fantastic that so much is open so early.
Meanwhile, down in the valley, Milton and I took 3+ mile walks both mornings, vaccumed, cleaned bathrooms, dealt with laundry, made two soups (red lentil and mulligatawney), baked chocolate chip cookies, gingerbread cake and pumpkin/peanut butter dog biscuits, tried a new recipe for dinner (mapo tofu) and waterproofed my ski pants ... because I'm fixin' to get up there myself pretty soon.
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