Day 62: Return to winter.
With just over a foot of new snow and temperatures a nippy 9°F this morning, it sure felt more like January or early February today than April.
Bobby and I met up at Alta this morning. During the season a foot of new snow would bring everyone out of the woodwork; today, the Wildcat lot was never more than half full. That first run down Max's to Greeley Bowl by itself made it well worth skipping out on work today.
But the runs just kept coming. Hamburger Hill (a name I heard for the first time today, and it's a far better name than Restaurant Hill) was divine. So was the High Yellow Trail/Backside we enjoyed after they opened it around 11 a.m.
They never opened Ballroom/Baldy Shoulder and the Westward Ho gate was once again inexplicably closed, although an untracked Merlin's was a perfectly acceptable consolation prize.
Before Backside Bobby noted that just about everyone who was there was heading out the High T, leaving about a dozen other people visible in the entire rest of Collins Gulch. Once Backside opened, everyone who was there headed straight for Backside. We decided to venture across the border to Snowbird instead.
Once on Hidden Peak we surmised the situation. Virtually everyone was headed out Road to Provo or out the Cirque Traverse, so we headed in the opposite direction, where I found a completely untracked line all the way at the far end of the Sunday Cliffs at the boundary rope. Our lunch run was a Shot 12, which once past a tricky rock in the upper throat was smooth and creamy. By the time we reached upper Adager the accelerating wind was starting to fill tracks back in, so we had high hopes for the afternoon.
My hopes were dashed, however, when the wind after lunch was turning the snow in Mineral Basin into proto-sastrugi. It was tricky, nasty, slabby stuff, and the increased wind chill added to ambient temps in the single digits made things downright brisk, too. While it was gusting at only 17 mph atop Mount Baldy at 10 a.m., by 1 p.m. those gusts had pegged the anemometer at 48 mph while temperatures dropped to 6.3°F, yielding a wind chill of -22°F. I opted to head back to Alta and head home at around 2 p.m. while Bobby soldiered on. Even though Main Street was open this morning, the increasing wind prompted ASP to close everything in Collins Gulch west of Mambo in the afternoon.
I wasn't alone in leaving, either, for more than half of the parking spaces in the never more than half-full Wildcat lot had already vacated as well.
Base depths are now at a season high of 104", and season-to-date snowfall is now at 408", finally eclipsing the 400-inch mark. More snow is predicted for Thursday, and then another system on Sunday.
With just over a foot of new snow and temperatures a nippy 9°F this morning, it sure felt more like January or early February today than April.
Bobby and I met up at Alta this morning. During the season a foot of new snow would bring everyone out of the woodwork; today, the Wildcat lot was never more than half full. That first run down Max's to Greeley Bowl by itself made it well worth skipping out on work today.
But the runs just kept coming. Hamburger Hill (a name I heard for the first time today, and it's a far better name than Restaurant Hill) was divine. So was the High Yellow Trail/Backside we enjoyed after they opened it around 11 a.m.
They never opened Ballroom/Baldy Shoulder and the Westward Ho gate was once again inexplicably closed, although an untracked Merlin's was a perfectly acceptable consolation prize.
Before Backside Bobby noted that just about everyone who was there was heading out the High T, leaving about a dozen other people visible in the entire rest of Collins Gulch. Once Backside opened, everyone who was there headed straight for Backside. We decided to venture across the border to Snowbird instead.
Once on Hidden Peak we surmised the situation. Virtually everyone was headed out Road to Provo or out the Cirque Traverse, so we headed in the opposite direction, where I found a completely untracked line all the way at the far end of the Sunday Cliffs at the boundary rope. Our lunch run was a Shot 12, which once past a tricky rock in the upper throat was smooth and creamy. By the time we reached upper Adager the accelerating wind was starting to fill tracks back in, so we had high hopes for the afternoon.
My hopes were dashed, however, when the wind after lunch was turning the snow in Mineral Basin into proto-sastrugi. It was tricky, nasty, slabby stuff, and the increased wind chill added to ambient temps in the single digits made things downright brisk, too. While it was gusting at only 17 mph atop Mount Baldy at 10 a.m., by 1 p.m. those gusts had pegged the anemometer at 48 mph while temperatures dropped to 6.3°F, yielding a wind chill of -22°F. I opted to head back to Alta and head home at around 2 p.m. while Bobby soldiered on. Even though Main Street was open this morning, the increasing wind prompted ASP to close everything in Collins Gulch west of Mambo in the afternoon.
I wasn't alone in leaving, either, for more than half of the parking spaces in the never more than half-full Wildcat lot had already vacated as well.
Base depths are now at a season high of 104", and season-to-date snowfall is now at 408", finally eclipsing the 400-inch mark. More snow is predicted for Thursday, and then another system on Sunday.
