Alta was supposed to open for the 2023/2024 season on November 17th. They didn't, because there wasn't any snow. When they did actually open, over Thanksgiving weekend, we were in Moab so H wasn't able to be there as he tries to do. After a full five days of inversion-induced smog in the Salt Lake valley, a nice storm rolled in Thursday night, blowing out the crap in the air and bringing in snow.
I bought a ten-pack this year so I will be judicious about my ski days (but not quite so picky about temperatures now that I have my lovely heated socks). So it should come as no surprise that I did not ski this weekend. H, on the other hand, has basically been waiting for this since mid-April. He left the house at 7 a.m. Saturday morning for the bus (the UTA is running the ski buses at half schedule again this year).
At 7:14 a.m. he was on the bus, standing room only. They got to Alta's Goldminer's Daughter lodge at 7:52. Since non-guests are no longer welcome at the GMD, he had to wait for the rope tow to start running so he could get up to Albion day lodge (the in-resort shuttles between the lodges are not yet running) to leave his gear bag (as GMD lockers are about $15/day). At 8:05, an hour and ten minutes before lifts opened, the line had already formed at Collins chair. He got to Albion at 8:30 and settled in for a while:opening was delayed until 10 a.m. so ski patrol could do avalanche mitigation.
As you can see, the lift lines were insane, as people stacked up waiting to get on the lift. The Sunnyside lift is not yet open (whether due to staffing or maintenance is unclear) so that wasn't available to help spread people out. But by the time H got up the mountain (25 minutes in the singles line, so I guess it could have been worse), however, it didn't end up being too bad - he skied right onto Sugarloaf, and continued to ride that chairlift with scarcely any lines.
As far as the skiing went, well, it's early season for sure. Not much open terrain, lots of rocks, you know the drill. And while it wasn't nuking snow all day, the light was very, very flat and visibility was bad. When he got home (before 3) and started laying out his gear for Sunday, he suggested that I not go - that I wouldn't enjoy the conditions.
Funny that: he didn't enjoy the conditions much on Sunday either: he got up and on the bus, arriving at GMD at 7:52, and then proceeded to sit in the Albion lodge until about 11:30 before getting back on a bus to come home without having skied at all. "I'm cutting my losses," he said. This storm has produced very high avalanche conditions and Alta didn't end up opening until nearly 1 p.m. Just down the hill, Snowbird didn't open anything but their little baby Chickadee lift all day - too dangerous.
Even further down the hill, Milton and I had a productive weekend. On Saturday, we did a three mile walk, and Milton got to chase/be chased by a friendly wheaten terrier. We made three meals' worth of red lentil soup for the freezer, inventoried/organized said freezer, put up the window candles, set up the mudroom for ski season, did a bunch of laundry, put flannel sheets on the guest bed, got started with holiday cards and caught up on blog posts. Dinner was a new tomato/peanut/chickpea Instantpot stew recipe. On Sunday, we did our walk, and Milton got to chase/be chased by our neighbor's black lab mix, Packer. We made chocolate chip cookies, a cinnamon apple galette, vacuumed, finished the laundry, continued to work on holiday cards and even did a Home Depot run where I got hand warmers for skiing and Milton got treats from an employee and pets from a little girl. Success all the way around!
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