Alta, UT 3/23/2014

Day 60: Not enough softening.

In short, although Sunday was beautifully sunny and warm, things never truly softened enough to make me happy. North-facing was stiff but edgeable and chalky. Stuff that got sun earlier in the week, however, didn't get enough of the sun's love.

I was somewhat uninspired, and called it quits at 2:30.

I was, however, somewhat stumped by the first-run view that greeted me from Germania Pass:



Some odd tracks! Look a bit closer:



Surely avalanches on that flat terrain have now been mitigated! :lol:

Apparently ASP was trying out a new explosives mix.

Astroid? :lol:

Before you arrived there were two snowmobiles. The hole is why there is only one in your photo.

I was at Altabird on 3/22 and it was surprisingly good. I started at Snowbird and enjoyed some decent dust on crust on Silver Fox and High Baldy. There were zero crowds and trams were walk-on. The Baldy Chutes were open at Alta but the hike from the Snowbird side was not, so I headed over to Alta and did Little Chute. It was a bit scraped in the narrowest section but otherwise was smooth, somewhat fluffy snow. I took a condo run and found some remaining powder in the trees lower down.

Later, I took the high route up Devil's Castle and was rewarded with a few more powder turns:


I check out Mineral Basin but the Sugar Cliffs were closed for avy danger. I took Dalton's Draw down to the tram dock for lunch and found dust on not-really-crust that skied great, plus I was the first person to have skied it at 12:45pm. After lunch I took another run on High Baldy and then decided to take that traverse all the way into Alta on the next run, where I was rewarded with more powder:


Little Chute had been great, so I decided to do it again near the end of the day. Here's what it looked like at that point:


To finish the day, I took the Ballroom traverse all the way to the ridge between Alta and Snowbird and hiked up to the high gate into Snowbird. Nobody had been there and there were more powder turns to be had in the trees.

It was definitely a dust-on-crust day but with a great deal of effort I was still able to make a few pow turns.