ski week (part one)

 We drove back to Salt Lake City Monday late morning, quickly made a batch of bloody mary mix and met our good friends at Grid City for early dinner.  After that, it was back home to start doing laundry.  For the week ahead, I had work and some car trouble; H, who tries to take the week between Christmas and New Year's off, went skiing.  And Mother Nature was in the mood to give us the goods, with a series of storms landing in the Wasatch mountains all week.

Hawaiian shirt Christmas

On Tuesday, the ski bus wasn't too crowded since it was dark and stormy.  H got up to the Albion base lodge before 8 a.m. and it had already started to snow and blow.  He encountered no lift lines, other than the initial one, and got pretty soaked.  He ended up with some impressive facial hair icing too, enough that people commented on it in the lift line, and left one little kid speechless.

That looks ... uncomfortable

Wednesday was a different story, with a break in the storm action.  He got on the 7:15 bus but it was standing room only, plus the canyon road was closed until nearly 8:30 a.m. for avalanche control.  The bus did get a police escort to the front of the line of traffic, however, so he got up to the lodge just before 9 a.m.  It was much busier because it wasn't snowing but the skiing was quite good.  With another storm - and a big one - on the way, the snowpack is looking pretty healthy.

Moody Wednesday

He had to do a work call Thursday morning, so he didn't get to the bus stop until 9 a.m., where a big crowd was already gathered.  He managed to get on but around twenty hopefuls did not manage to squeeze in.  Then, to add insult to injury, they were stuck in the red snake of traffic heading up the canyon: it was after 11 a.m. by the time he got to Albion.  Traffic was even worse for the trip down canyon in the afternoon: he couldn't get on the 3:39 bus but managed the 4:09; there was a red snake heading down as well, and to make matters worse, there was one single person on his bus that wanted to get off at Snowbird, which added 40 minutes to the ride.  Then someone passed out (briefly) on the bus, likely from dehydration.  They came to quickly and the bus luckily wasn't forced to stop.  H finally got home at 5:49 p.m. where a very happy Milton was glad to get outside.