Day 35: The APP Invades PCMR
Alta, Snowbird, Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) and Deer Valley season passes now include three free days at each of the other resorts for the first time this winter. Meanwhile, my PCMR season pass includes two free "friends and family" day tickets to give away. Mrs. Admin felt like getting out into the fresh spring-like air to ski today so using a free family ticket was a no-brainer, and the Alta Powder Posse (APP) decided to use some of their free tickets to join her for a change of scenery.
Somehow, no one got their lift ticket pulled, no one got admonished for skiing too fast in a designated slow area, and no one got hurt. It was a good day. :wink:
I think that Mrs. Admin and I are the only two in today's entire group who have skied PCMR in the past 20 years or more. By default I was therefore appointed today's de facto tour guide, and we spent most of the day cruising in gorgeous warm sunshine across many, many miles of PCMR. With multiple high-speed quads and six-packs we covered an enormous amount of ground. I largely kept the slope angle low for Mrs. Admin, but the others didn't seem to mind.
Bobby Danger said he wanted mileage, so mileage is what he got. Up Crescent, down to Silverlode, then off to McConkey's for a couple of laps. We thereafter moved over to Pioneer and headed toward Jupiter before returning via Thaynes and then all the way down to King Con.
For a holiday weekend the crowds were largely non-existent -- I don't think that we spent more than 60 seconds in a lift line all day. PCMR has enormous uphill capacity and the sheer acreage to handle it. Sundance turns Main Street into hell on earth for 10 days, but the mountains of the Wasatch Back are largely unaffected by the film festival. And with intense sunshine, temperatures around 40 dF and nary a breath of wind, you couldn't ask for more spectacular weather (save for of course a couple of feet of freshies).
By noon we were hungry. I figured that the independently operated Silver Star Cafe would be a good lunch choice: slopeside, yet way off the beaten path and away from both the main resort base and Main Street, which is of course a total junk show with Sundance in town. It turned out to be an excellent choice -- wonderful food, reasonable pricing and a patio to kill all others.
I could've done without the wandering bulldog/Sharpei mix that puked about a gallon right next to our table, but Mrs. Admin seems to have a soft spot for ugly dogs -- she married me, after all -- and apparently he's something of a neighborhood celebrity.
After lunch we headed back up Silver Star, then King Con to get back to PayDay in the base area to access a lap on Town Lift. By the time we headed back up Bonanza at mid-afternoon Mrs. Admin was getting tired, so she retired to the massive sun deck on the Mid-Mountain Lodge while the rest of us headed up Pioneer to access Jupiter for something a bit more challenging. We found that in one of my favorite lines on Jupiter, the steep avalanche path of Portuguese Gap. It was still a bit stiff but nevertheless completely smooth and edgeable, gradually transitioning into a falling-leaf bump line on the tight and narrow lower angle runout. If I lived on the Wasatch Back I'd be spending 90% of my time on that lift. As a bonus, on our way back to retrieve Mrs. Admin we also found some old semi-pow in the steeps of north-facing 10th Mountain trees off Pioneer, which we got to via Thaynes -- good stuff!
It was a bit after 3 p.m. when we met up with Mrs. Admin, and she was the sole person stationed on the Mid-Mountain sun deck. That in itself was shocking, given the weather and the fact that it's a holiday weekend, even considering that they stopped serving food at 3 p.m.
We finished the day with a repeat lap down to Main Street in downtown Park City -- Bobby Danger was just begging to do that again -- and back up the Town Lift to return to the truck at 4 p.m. via Homerun.
A good day!
Alta, Snowbird, Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) and Deer Valley season passes now include three free days at each of the other resorts for the first time this winter. Meanwhile, my PCMR season pass includes two free "friends and family" day tickets to give away. Mrs. Admin felt like getting out into the fresh spring-like air to ski today so using a free family ticket was a no-brainer, and the Alta Powder Posse (APP) decided to use some of their free tickets to join her for a change of scenery.
Somehow, no one got their lift ticket pulled, no one got admonished for skiing too fast in a designated slow area, and no one got hurt. It was a good day. :wink:
I think that Mrs. Admin and I are the only two in today's entire group who have skied PCMR in the past 20 years or more. By default I was therefore appointed today's de facto tour guide, and we spent most of the day cruising in gorgeous warm sunshine across many, many miles of PCMR. With multiple high-speed quads and six-packs we covered an enormous amount of ground. I largely kept the slope angle low for Mrs. Admin, but the others didn't seem to mind.
Bobby Danger said he wanted mileage, so mileage is what he got. Up Crescent, down to Silverlode, then off to McConkey's for a couple of laps. We thereafter moved over to Pioneer and headed toward Jupiter before returning via Thaynes and then all the way down to King Con.
For a holiday weekend the crowds were largely non-existent -- I don't think that we spent more than 60 seconds in a lift line all day. PCMR has enormous uphill capacity and the sheer acreage to handle it. Sundance turns Main Street into hell on earth for 10 days, but the mountains of the Wasatch Back are largely unaffected by the film festival. And with intense sunshine, temperatures around 40 dF and nary a breath of wind, you couldn't ask for more spectacular weather (save for of course a couple of feet of freshies).
By noon we were hungry. I figured that the independently operated Silver Star Cafe would be a good lunch choice: slopeside, yet way off the beaten path and away from both the main resort base and Main Street, which is of course a total junk show with Sundance in town. It turned out to be an excellent choice -- wonderful food, reasonable pricing and a patio to kill all others.
I could've done without the wandering bulldog/Sharpei mix that puked about a gallon right next to our table, but Mrs. Admin seems to have a soft spot for ugly dogs -- she married me, after all -- and apparently he's something of a neighborhood celebrity.
After lunch we headed back up Silver Star, then King Con to get back to PayDay in the base area to access a lap on Town Lift. By the time we headed back up Bonanza at mid-afternoon Mrs. Admin was getting tired, so she retired to the massive sun deck on the Mid-Mountain Lodge while the rest of us headed up Pioneer to access Jupiter for something a bit more challenging. We found that in one of my favorite lines on Jupiter, the steep avalanche path of Portuguese Gap. It was still a bit stiff but nevertheless completely smooth and edgeable, gradually transitioning into a falling-leaf bump line on the tight and narrow lower angle runout. If I lived on the Wasatch Back I'd be spending 90% of my time on that lift. As a bonus, on our way back to retrieve Mrs. Admin we also found some old semi-pow in the steeps of north-facing 10th Mountain trees off Pioneer, which we got to via Thaynes -- good stuff!
It was a bit after 3 p.m. when we met up with Mrs. Admin, and she was the sole person stationed on the Mid-Mountain sun deck. That in itself was shocking, given the weather and the fact that it's a holiday weekend, even considering that they stopped serving food at 3 p.m.
We finished the day with a repeat lap down to Main Street in downtown Park City -- Bobby Danger was just begging to do that again -- and back up the Town Lift to return to the truck at 4 p.m. via Homerun.
A good day!
