Day 29: Mother Nature had the last laugh.
With two feet of new snow already this week I had fully expected today to be deep. I had visions of hip deep fluff. What I had not counted on were winds that we're gusting to nearly 60 miles per hour. They completely jacked the new snow, and stripped some exposed areas down to levels below where they were last weekend. What we got were alternating areas of wind slab, smooth cream the consistency of Cool Whip, and wind scoured hard sastrugi.
Apparently no one else expected this today either, because the place was a zoo. With today's opening delayed by nearly 40 minutes for avalanche control, and people continually arriving in the meantime, the pre-opening line grew to epic proportions.
There's a huge amount of pent up demand in Utah right now for a powder day. Even Wildcat was backed up beyond the Buckhorn building. The lines for Collins and Wildcat actually intertwined. We nevertheless got through the first Collins line in only about 10 minutes, and by 11 a.m. the liftlines had completely evaporated as many folks left. They either went to work or gave up.
In the morning we were hemmed in between Spruce Forest to the east and Mambo to the west. Nothing else was accessible, not even the High Traverse. I took two runs with Tony Crocker and rdwore before retiring to Goldminers to resume my work day via VPN.
The High T finally opened just before noon. After lunch I put the laptop back down to take two more runs with Tony, rdwore and AmyZ before we all gave up ourselves and headed down Canyon to home.
In short, today was a colossal let-down.
With two feet of new snow already this week I had fully expected today to be deep. I had visions of hip deep fluff. What I had not counted on were winds that we're gusting to nearly 60 miles per hour. They completely jacked the new snow, and stripped some exposed areas down to levels below where they were last weekend. What we got were alternating areas of wind slab, smooth cream the consistency of Cool Whip, and wind scoured hard sastrugi.
Apparently no one else expected this today either, because the place was a zoo. With today's opening delayed by nearly 40 minutes for avalanche control, and people continually arriving in the meantime, the pre-opening line grew to epic proportions.
There's a huge amount of pent up demand in Utah right now for a powder day. Even Wildcat was backed up beyond the Buckhorn building. The lines for Collins and Wildcat actually intertwined. We nevertheless got through the first Collins line in only about 10 minutes, and by 11 a.m. the liftlines had completely evaporated as many folks left. They either went to work or gave up.
In the morning we were hemmed in between Spruce Forest to the east and Mambo to the west. Nothing else was accessible, not even the High Traverse. I took two runs with Tony Crocker and rdwore before retiring to Goldminers to resume my work day via VPN.
The High T finally opened just before noon. After lunch I put the laptop back down to take two more runs with Tony, rdwore and AmyZ before we all gave up ourselves and headed down Canyon to home.
In short, today was a colossal let-down.