Trying to ski after these storms has gotten insane. You have to be there already.
A couple of Adam's friends who live in SLC stayed in one of our Iron Blosam units vacated by someone in our group who left Thursday.
Staying up here, we root for road closures/delays. The one today wasn't that long but it helped.
Liz, George and I got to Wilbere chair at 9AM opening bell. The new Wilbere quad is not high speed but it never had much of a line either. One of the powder days a couple of years ago I started with 3 Wilbere laps before it was cut up too much, but this one was better. On my second ride up I could see cars driving up the canyon but few were parked at Snowbird yet. So this time I got 7 Wilbere powder laps in: 2 Wilbere Ridge, 3 Harper's Ferry East and 2 Harper's Ferry West. Liz and George got 5 laps before we left Wilbere at 10:20. George on the last Harper's Ferry West run:
When we moved to Gadzoom's ~5 minute line, Tseeb joined us and we continued to Little Cloud, where Tseeb had already taken 4 laps. Liz and George skied some leftovers near the lift as no surprise Road to Provo was closed. They continued down to Baby Thunder.
I figured I had one long and steep powder run in me today so I recalled last year I had followed Bryce out the Cirque Traverse and skied South Chute. This time with Tseeb we went a bit farther to Wilbere Bowl. View down including new Wyssen Tower for avalanche control:
Wilbere Chute had been skied but with 2 feet new snow it was nearly always possible to make turns in big swaths of powder. I had two suck wind breaks before hitting the road above Big Emma. Upper Big Emma still had some powder too. I crossed past the mid-Gad mid-station to make sure I could get directly to Baby Thunder.
I did not find out until later that Baby Thunder had only been open since 11AM. So no wonder my initial approach and first two runs there were mostly untracked. On my second chair ride Liz has plenty of freshies right under the lift.
This did not last long. The third run was good but I ventured into some too tight shrubbery on the fourth to avoid tracks.
So we left Baby Thunder at 12:45 and Liz and George called it a day, skiing from Wilbere to the bridge in cut up powder. I wasn't that lively either but I had one more objective to complete my day. I had my biggest lift line of the day at Peruvian, close to 15 minutes, as it also had opened around 11AM. I got some bits and pieces of powder off the low Baldy traverse and dropping into Blackjack.
As on Sunday I skied Blackjack to the condos to meet the Alta Shuttle, and as on Sunday he was right there. However this time he refused to pick me up because I was not staying at the condos. I guess I need to have Liz with me to get sympathy from the driver. I walked to the stop sign pickup area where there were 5 other skiers. The Alta shuttle driver drove past all of us without stopping even though he only had 2 other passengers; he must have been having a bad day. Fortunately a Powder House ski shop van came by and took all of us to the Collins base. Here's a sticker on the stop sign that you would find nowhere else but Alta.
I had contemplated a Collins/High T lap but decided at 2:30 I was too tired for that. So I rode Wildcat and amazingly Tseeb had gone over there too and was about 5 chairs behind me. We skied back to Snowbird via the route former admin had taught us well, putting the only two tracks into the skier's right scattered trees. It was the best run of the day for me and great finale to Iron Blosam week 2025.
I skied 16,700 vertical, about 11K of powder. Yes I know, on a big powder day I am less willing to stop frequently for photo ops. Weather was mostly overcast with occasional snow and a few sunny breaks in the afternoon. Temps were in the 20's at the base and teens up higher.
