Alta, Mar. 9 and 13, 2025

[Tony Crocker]

In recent years we nearly always ski the opening day Sunday of Iron Blosam week at Alta with former admin.

The big news this year is that the Mineral Basin chair is down, and it looks like that happened when Tseeb was there Feb. 27. I have not inquired myself, but word of mouth was that it was a gearbox but that the part was now here. Nonetheless we saw no signs of life looking into Mineral Basin from Sugarloaf Pass Sunday.

Nor on Monday from the top of Little Cloud where the MB chair base is visible:

Weather was calm and blue sky Sunday, Monday and most of Tuesday, so why is nothing happening? Today we hear that the gearbox is too heavy to transport by snowcat so they need a helicopter. Winds were up today and a storm is coming, so who knows when the repair will get done?

All of this means you have to take a bus to Alta. Rather than wait half an hour (could be more on a weekend) for the UTA bus, Liz and I skied Blackjack to the condos and picked up the local Alta shuttle that we have used before after condo area powder runs.

We met former admin, Telejon, Malcolm and Kingslug around 11:30. First run up Collins we skied the early part of Ballroom.

In the warm weather the snow does not melt/freeze up there, but it was set up churned powder from the day before, so not great. The rest of the day we pretty much stuck to groomers. The last one with former admin was from Wildcat, where we had this view of Mt. Baldy and lots of tracks from skiers who had hiked it and skied Baldy Shoulder.

There are 6 new Wyssen towers visible in that pic for avalanche control. I first saw them at Ischgl in 2017.

Former admin left at noon(!) because he needed to film and work on his Grand Adventure video for which he posts new content every Wednesday. I remarked that this is the first time I've seen that encroach upon his ski time. But don't feel too sorry for him. On Saturday he made the rope drop for Backside after last week's 4 foot dump.

Here's local editorial opinion in the current era when Utah skier visits have more than doubled in the past 20 years.

Since it was a mellow day the group liked my suggestion of a lunch at Rustler Lodge. We got there via a cruise through the Sugarloaf and Sunnyside sectors from top of Collins. By the time that lunch was over the locals departed to beat weekend traffic. View of Sugarloaf lift, Backside and Greeley Hill from top of Sunnyside:

We skied one groomer on Supreme and two on Sugarloaf before taking the EBT. I took the Ballroom traverse out to Harold's, which had more chalky snow. Liz rode the bus back to Snowbird while I skied the very tedious Blackjack traverse.

In early morning Liz had one warmup lap of Peruvian and I had two before heading to Alta. I skied 5,900 vertical at Snowbird and 13,500 at Alta.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I returned to Alta Thursday as the predicted storm was underway. I got lucky with a UTA bus at the base of Iron Blosam stairs within a couple of minutes and so did not need to take the Blackjack route as on Sunday. I got in line at Collins at 11:15. Ira was at Alta early and he said the visibility was tough the first hour or two.

It snowed all day, though with varied intensity and type of snow, heavy, light and graupel. My legs were beat up some from the prior 4 days and I reasoned that Alta's groomers being wider and not as steep as Snowbird's would be more likely to accumulate the softer new snow and not get scraped down.

Liz was at Snowbird all day as she met her friends Andy and Lisa there. I knew kingslug was at Alta, so after a Main Street warmup run I skied past Sugarloaf and met him at Supreme. We skied Big Dipper and Sleepy Hollow, then Tseeb found us on Supreme for a repeat of Sleepy Hollow.

We moved to Sugarloaf, where we were wind blasted in our faces for most of the ride up. But the snow under the lift on Extrovert looked wind loaded, so we skied that twice. Then we skied down to the rope tow and took a break in Goldminer's.

We took one Collins run to Race Course/Saddle, which we had skied as a groomer Sunday. There were more people on it today, but the surface still mostly soft. Ira then left.

I was fairly tired too, so declined the long traverse to former admin's favored route to Snowbird, but Tseeb wanted to do that. So we rode Wildcat and I pointed him to the first Snowbird sign below Punch Bowl. The shoulder of Punch Bowl had quite a bit of new snow, and I was pleasantly surprised that Bear Paw just below had seen few skiers and so had true powder skiing until it dropped into Collins Face.

I skied 13,500 vertical and got on the UTA bus in Alta's lot 8 minutes before its 3PM departure to Snowbird.

No pictures Thursday with the challenging weather.

 

[tseeb]

Hoping road opens well after 8:30. Just heard some blasting that sounded like it was coming from behind Iron Blosam.

We need to do the long drive home on Saturday as our dog will be dropped off by our son, after staying with his friends for two weeks, hopefully in very late afternoon. I'm wondering if I should take a couple of runs on Saturday as Friday will only be my 5th day on my Ikon here and I get 7 and don't plan to return. Some photos from Thursday 3/13. Wind woke me up at 5 and it snowed on and off starting then. Late start for me as I was waiting for new snow to cover firm layer. Saw this when I walked out of Iron Blosam before 11.

I rode and skied Wilbere twice and Gadzoom once before skiing to Snowbird Center and catching 994 bus to Alta with less than a minute wait. At Alta, I rode Collins twice, skiing it once. The 2nd time up I skied Extrovert, where wind had blown in ~6" of new snow. Next time up I skied Razorback where edges were untracked and getting deeper.

I moved to Supreme and joined a threesome loading lift. Lady next to me said something about joining pair ahead of me, but it was too late before I could get what she was saying. About halfway up I realized @Tony Crocker was on chair ahead of me with @kingslug who I'd never met before. They led me down a good soft run, then we moved to Sugarloaf for a couple more Extrovert laps. Wind had picked up so we had to hold onto our hoods going up chair, but snow was getting deeper.

We skied down to and used rope-tow to get to very busy Goldminer's Daughter so I could eat some of the lunch I was carrying and refill and empty water. We did a Racecourse lap on Collins finding some good new snow along edges, then Tony and I rode Wildcat. After skiing a little steep powder, he pointed me towards White Cliffs. It looked like only one person had gone through gate ahead of me and their tracks were mostly covered. Visibility was good, but light was not great for taking photo of my tracks. Looking up and then looking down towards Bypass Road and Cliffs Lodge from a little lower.

Back at Snowbird I rode and skied Peruvian twice and Wilbere once before quitting a little before 4 with 21.6K.