AltaBird, UT 6/3/11

Day 95: Darned cold.

I went up for a few runs with Bobby Danger and Telejon this morning. Dang, it was cold! Felt like February. Dead as a doornail again, I was third car in the Bypass Road lot at ten minutes to the 8:00 opening.

Nothing was soft from the start, even south-facing, but at least untracked areas were perfectly smooth. This is the first solid refreeze we've had in a while and should set us up for some stellar corn.

We wrapped up the morning with a trip over to Alta to ski Backside, which was finally starting to soften nicely and yielded a nice cruise down Yellow Trail to Backside.



We rounded the saddle to Backside, and not surprisingly nearly the entire face had slid.



Traversing across refrozen wet slide debris was unpleasant, but by the time we reached Eddie's High we had a clean, smooth shot all the way to the very bottom.

A fine way to kick off the weekend.

day85....... bullet proof smoooooooth !!!! this week for sure has by far been the best freeze and thaw cycle y.t.d. , 15degrees fri. morning first chair up . no way was anything even remotely considering starting to soften - 1st run into mineral basin headed over to cham. 1 out to the smoooth next to the rope . it was so frozen so hard one wouldn't leave any tracks and super fast fast fast !!! back up m.b.x. to hidden peak back into mineral out through cham.1 gate to sugerloaf pass into alta , head out across yellow trail to backside - east greely bowl had 1/4 " of soft corn perfection and fast around the shoulder to backside (everything early slid big ) all the way across to suzies trees decending the hill just short of the trees out to the flats 1/4" sweet corn and fast supportable. by now things had started to soften a bit down at the base of snowbird (the very bottom) !!! mineral basin was still frozen upon return - but not to the point of leaving no tracks- headed over to ski patrol gully figuring that the lower elevation and south facing combo would move the softening process along and it was 1/4 to 1/2 " sweeeeet corn back around the hill to m.b.x. . back up m.b.x. and head over to baldy traverse -do the hike up baldy shoulder through armpit gate back into alta for full length tombstone - 1/2" of fine alta corn on 100% supportable- over to the summit of wildcat chair out the shoulder --- now it gets to be really really good corn due north facing wildcat trees 1/2" corn to the base of snowbird. it's anice long run this time of year when rope lines are gone between alta and snowbird , if a person knows their way around can get huuuge corn lines . four runs in snowbird and off to work for the afternoon ..