Day 25: A cold one.
Yesterday was cold, but today just felt colder. Maybe because the temperatures were squeezing a little bit of moisture from a shallow atmosphere, making it more humid and dropping barely more than a trace even though the precipitation ended near Snowbird Entry 2. In any event, I was cold enough to head in for the morning latte after two runs, far earlier than normal.
It was there, though, that I realized that made brittle by the cold, my Snowbird season pass had broken off the carabiner on my pants from which it was hanging. #-o
I finished my coffee and sped down to Skier Services at Alta to report it lost. I spread the word around the Collins lift gates, too, and boarded the chair. Then, riding past Schuss Gully my eye caught a speck of blue beneath Tower 5: my pass!
I had planned to go to Snowbird today anyway, but this gave me a reason to have to go as the hole in the pass was broken. So it was back up Collins, down to and up Sugarloaf and through the Sugar Shack into Mineral Basin.
We all had expected a line at MBE on a chilly morning, so we were surprised to see one only a minute or two long. Not bad at all.
We figured that we might as well take a fun route to the Tram Plaza, so we entered Great Scott via the Rat's Nest. It's still a matter of hanging onto the knotted rope and sidestepping over rocks to reach Great Scott, but at least there's snow partially covering the rocks in the Rat's Nest now. Snow in Great Scott proper was thick but soft, and others had formed decent sized bumps through the choke onto the apron where it smoothed out again.
It felt much warmer at the base of Snowbird, but I was nonetheless happy to ride the enclosed Tram after picking up my replacement pass, especially as we were able to walk onto a full dock and load the cabin almost immediately. Looking down at Peruvian you could see empty chairs going up the hill three or four in a row. I'm not quite sure where everyone was, especially because Big Emma looked like a total junk show with people as I drove down canyon a day earlier.
While at Alta in the morning we had noticed the Armpit gate open into Alta from Snowbird's High Baldy Traverse with only a handful of tracks, so the route home seemed obvious. We hiked the Peruvian Ridge to the High Baldy Traverse and shoved off.
As predicted the traverse was bony at Memorial Buttress, but as seemed the theme for the day, not as bad as expected. You could take a lower line at the end to avoid the worst of it and I've certainly seen that spot far worse than it was today. We sat for a while at the Armpit gate to admire the view before shoving off for a few untracked turns down to the in-bounds Alta terrain accessible from an Alta lift.
As you can see, the day wasn't terribly photogenic, hence the lack of images in today's report.
We headed to Rustler Lodge for a sit-down lunch away from the crowds at 1 p.m., but I'm not entirely certain what perfect storm hit that place. The dining room was nearly full and it took 10 minutes or so just to get through the line for a table. Staff was literally jogging through the dining room. No matter, I'm just happy to see them doing the lunch business and next weekend they'll be back to empty as usual.
We finished off with a condo run, but the snow at that elevation was a bit more "stout" than expected, to quote Telejon. I headed down canyon at 3:30 p.m. fully satisfied by the day.
Yesterday was cold, but today just felt colder. Maybe because the temperatures were squeezing a little bit of moisture from a shallow atmosphere, making it more humid and dropping barely more than a trace even though the precipitation ended near Snowbird Entry 2. In any event, I was cold enough to head in for the morning latte after two runs, far earlier than normal.
It was there, though, that I realized that made brittle by the cold, my Snowbird season pass had broken off the carabiner on my pants from which it was hanging. #-o
I finished my coffee and sped down to Skier Services at Alta to report it lost. I spread the word around the Collins lift gates, too, and boarded the chair. Then, riding past Schuss Gully my eye caught a speck of blue beneath Tower 5: my pass!
I had planned to go to Snowbird today anyway, but this gave me a reason to have to go as the hole in the pass was broken. So it was back up Collins, down to and up Sugarloaf and through the Sugar Shack into Mineral Basin.
We all had expected a line at MBE on a chilly morning, so we were surprised to see one only a minute or two long. Not bad at all.
We figured that we might as well take a fun route to the Tram Plaza, so we entered Great Scott via the Rat's Nest. It's still a matter of hanging onto the knotted rope and sidestepping over rocks to reach Great Scott, but at least there's snow partially covering the rocks in the Rat's Nest now. Snow in Great Scott proper was thick but soft, and others had formed decent sized bumps through the choke onto the apron where it smoothed out again.
It felt much warmer at the base of Snowbird, but I was nonetheless happy to ride the enclosed Tram after picking up my replacement pass, especially as we were able to walk onto a full dock and load the cabin almost immediately. Looking down at Peruvian you could see empty chairs going up the hill three or four in a row. I'm not quite sure where everyone was, especially because Big Emma looked like a total junk show with people as I drove down canyon a day earlier.
While at Alta in the morning we had noticed the Armpit gate open into Alta from Snowbird's High Baldy Traverse with only a handful of tracks, so the route home seemed obvious. We hiked the Peruvian Ridge to the High Baldy Traverse and shoved off.
As predicted the traverse was bony at Memorial Buttress, but as seemed the theme for the day, not as bad as expected. You could take a lower line at the end to avoid the worst of it and I've certainly seen that spot far worse than it was today. We sat for a while at the Armpit gate to admire the view before shoving off for a few untracked turns down to the in-bounds Alta terrain accessible from an Alta lift.
As you can see, the day wasn't terribly photogenic, hence the lack of images in today's report.
We headed to Rustler Lodge for a sit-down lunch away from the crowds at 1 p.m., but I'm not entirely certain what perfect storm hit that place. The dining room was nearly full and it took 10 minutes or so just to get through the line for a table. Staff was literally jogging through the dining room. No matter, I'm just happy to see them doing the lunch business and next weekend they'll be back to empty as usual.
We finished off with a condo run, but the snow at that elevation was a bit more "stout" than expected, to quote Telejon. I headed down canyon at 3:30 p.m. fully satisfied by the day.
