whee let's ski

 While I cooked my little legs off on Saturday, H was experiencing what appears to be the start of February vacation (how do we know? we don't have kids) up at Alta: BUSY.   He got on the 7:10 a.m. bus and was surprised that it was SRO.  There was a red snake [line of traffic tail-lights] heading up the canyon for a while but he did get to the Goldminer's Daughter stop by 7:53 and Albion Day Lodge by 8:01.

Where the sky is the same color as the slopes

It was overcast and chilly all day but H did his thing, including getting into Devil's Castle for the first time all season.  It hasn't been open that much, actually, with all the snow needing to be managed.  He made a decent day of it and was back on the 2:39 p.m. bus down-canyon.

In the Castle

On Sunday, I had gotten all the domesticity out of my system and was pysched to ski.  We caught the 7:10 bus, which was much less crowded for some reason and we got seats, plus it was a free fare day, saving me $10 in ski bus fare.  When we got to Albion, the sun was mostly out and it looked to be a nice day, even warmer than they had forecast.  Which turned out to be fortunate.

 Here's the thing about those miraculous battery-heated ski socks: you have to remember to bring the batteries with you.  

Luckily for me, it was quite a bit warmer than expected (up to 41 F per the Collins base thermometer).  Although my toes still eventually got cold (because they always get cold), it took much longer than it would have had it been in the 20s as forecast, and I was able to still enjoy the skiing sans batteries.

It was definitey busy, though, and lots of kids.  It took forever to get on our first chair at Sunnyside: people could not count to six so there were lots of partially empty chairs going up, and the liftie was not the most efficient we've encountered.  Once we got out of there, we went straight to Supreme, where the crowds did not join us until 10:10 a.m.  There hasn't been any new snow for at least a week so conditions were pretty beaten down and chalky but fast - which is actually how I like it, although the steeper pitches got skied off pretty quickly.

Skimo = Skiing and mountaineering

(we took this photo for a friend who is a skimo-er)

We stayed at Supreme until the lines got too long, took Sugarloaf only to get up to the EBT, and then went around and skied Collins for a while.  Conditions were the same there but the lines were perhaps a touch shorter.  We did laps there with no breaks until about 1 p.m. when H couldn't stand to wear his telemark boots any longer.  We did an around-the-world - up Collins, down through Sugarloaf and out to Sunnyside - then grabbed our ski bags from the Albion lodge and rode the tow row to Goldminer's Daughter to catch the bus.