Our good luck this week continued as LCC got a surprise 9 inches overnight. Evan on OpenSnow said this was a localized event and that the predicted second wave of the storm would arrive on schedule during the day Saturday. Which it certainly did, puking snow all day long.
With expected terrain closures, I was more than content to follow admin and a few visiting friends around as long as my legs could hold out after Thursday/Friday. After packing up at Iron Blosam Liz and I were to no surprise far back in the opening Collins line. As admin was leading his friends out the High T, we took a shorter route out the lower traverse to the beginning of Sunspot and skied powder through the trees near the Collins liftline to catch up.
With admin & company I then skied mostly untracked lines on Greeley Hill and North Rustler and a very soft line on Jitterbug. We then moved to Wildcat for runs on Ridge Shot, a hike to Low Shoulder and Hamburger Hill to lunch at Watson’s. The hike above the Keyhole gate to Low Shoulder (a rope line keeps us out of the avy exposure from Armpit/Baldy) was not a trivial one but a week of sleeping at 8,000 feet probably compensated for my leg fatigue. Visibility up there was poor but with consistent face shot turns it didn’t matter….until I hit the Wildcat cat track and splattered. Fortunately the cat track was buried in enough new snow that my fall was a soft one.
After lunch the plan was to take it easy and show admin’s visitors Sugarloaf and Supreme, where only limited ungroomed terrain was open. We skied first into Sugarloaf via a soft line skier’s left of Chartreuse Nose, then a Cabin Hill run to Supreme. There we were pleasantly surprised to find that Supreme Bowl had opened though not Catherine’s beyond it. Admin led us out to Spiny 1. Liz there:
We then cut right to the lower part of Back 40 for a last few powder tracks. We then cruised on to the Albion base for some coffee before departing. The 4PM departure was one of the slower ones in my experience. It took half an hour to get from Alta to the last Snowbird merge at Entry 1. There were no accidents so traffic flowed fairly well below the merge.
I skied 15,500 vertical, about 7K of powder Saturday. With 5 days on this trip, Alta passed Snow Summit to become my 4th most skied area (vertical x 1000):
1) Mammoth 8,161
2) Snowbird 2,436
3) Mt. Baldy 1,331
4) Alta 956
5) Snow Summit 871 (I have another 307 at Bear Mt. The areas are 2 miles apart and were under separate ownership until 2002.)
6) Whistler/Blackcomb 672
7) Mt. Bachelor 665
8 ) Mountain High 515 (last skied in 2011 with the dismal SoCal recent seasons)
9 ) Aspen 486 (all 4 areas)
10) Heavenly 408
11) Squaw 401
12) Vail 400
13) Mustang Snowcat 399
With expected terrain closures, I was more than content to follow admin and a few visiting friends around as long as my legs could hold out after Thursday/Friday. After packing up at Iron Blosam Liz and I were to no surprise far back in the opening Collins line. As admin was leading his friends out the High T, we took a shorter route out the lower traverse to the beginning of Sunspot and skied powder through the trees near the Collins liftline to catch up.
With admin & company I then skied mostly untracked lines on Greeley Hill and North Rustler and a very soft line on Jitterbug. We then moved to Wildcat for runs on Ridge Shot, a hike to Low Shoulder and Hamburger Hill to lunch at Watson’s. The hike above the Keyhole gate to Low Shoulder (a rope line keeps us out of the avy exposure from Armpit/Baldy) was not a trivial one but a week of sleeping at 8,000 feet probably compensated for my leg fatigue. Visibility up there was poor but with consistent face shot turns it didn’t matter….until I hit the Wildcat cat track and splattered. Fortunately the cat track was buried in enough new snow that my fall was a soft one.
After lunch the plan was to take it easy and show admin’s visitors Sugarloaf and Supreme, where only limited ungroomed terrain was open. We skied first into Sugarloaf via a soft line skier’s left of Chartreuse Nose, then a Cabin Hill run to Supreme. There we were pleasantly surprised to find that Supreme Bowl had opened though not Catherine’s beyond it. Admin led us out to Spiny 1. Liz there:
We then cut right to the lower part of Back 40 for a last few powder tracks. We then cruised on to the Albion base for some coffee before departing. The 4PM departure was one of the slower ones in my experience. It took half an hour to get from Alta to the last Snowbird merge at Entry 1. There were no accidents so traffic flowed fairly well below the merge.
I skied 15,500 vertical, about 7K of powder Saturday. With 5 days on this trip, Alta passed Snow Summit to become my 4th most skied area (vertical x 1000):
1) Mammoth 8,161
2) Snowbird 2,436
3) Mt. Baldy 1,331
4) Alta 956
5) Snow Summit 871 (I have another 307 at Bear Mt. The areas are 2 miles apart and were under separate ownership until 2002.)
6) Whistler/Blackcomb 672
7) Mt. Bachelor 665
8 ) Mountain High 515 (last skied in 2011 with the dismal SoCal recent seasons)
9 ) Aspen 486 (all 4 areas)
10) Heavenly 408
11) Squaw 401
12) Vail 400
13) Mustang Snowcat 399