Day 28: A busted forecast.
But busted in the right way. The forecast was for 5-10" by Saturday evening, or 6-12" depending on whose forecast you looked at. Instead, the storm total by closing bell today was a remarkable 31". Rdwore proclaimed that in 50 years of skiing a crazy number of days each season, today was right up there with the best he's ever experienced.
I also set a personal record today, but not a good one. Although I left home at 8:15 a.m. the 20-minute drive from my house to Goldminer's Daughter today took 1 hour and 50 minutes, and I place the blame squarely on Unified Police Department. The LCC Road went to 4x4 or chains only at 10 p.m. last night, so this was a surprise to no one, especially the police. Even though UPD places officers at the mouth of the canyon to check for chains or 4x4 and snow tires on days that seemingly don't need it, they inexplicably had no one checking today. Once the grade of the road increased between A Gate and B Gate, people started spinning out and getting stuck, gumming up the works. That road was greaseball, for I even know people with all-wheel drive vehicles that couldn't make it and got stuck. Even in my 4WD Tacoma with the proper tires I found myself occasionally losing traction and hoping for the best. I live right at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, and just to get from there to the merge at the mouth of Little Cottonwood took an astonishing 1 hour 10 minutes by itself. It was ridiculous to just be sitting there, not even yet in the mountains and still not moving, when the problem could have been avoided had the proper enforcement of the road restrictions taken place. Wake up, UPD, and start handing out some hefty fines to violators and send their asses back down the canyon! Not only will you help alleviate the situation, but sufficiently stiff fines will get the word out that it's not worth it to try to pull off the drive without the required equipment. If people suffer no consequences, that word will get out, too, and more and more morons will try this stunt and make the situation far worse than it already is.
I went early; those who planned to arrive a little later had it far, far worse. Another friend I spoke with left his house in Taylorsville around 9 a.m., and it took him a mind boggling 4 hours from 9400 S in Sandy to reach Alta. Strangely, for those of us who made it up in less time, that was a windfall, for Alta was absolutely deserted -- and I mean zero liftlines with nearly three feet of new snow -- until around 2 p.m. when the Collins liftline finally grew to an unmanageable 90 seconds. :lol: We literally skied untracked powder from opening to the closing bell just because no one could get up the road. (Yeah, some of us who left 30 minutes before I did actually made it in time for opening.)
I spent my morning tooling around with Tcope, as we've been meaning to ski together this season. He only skis a handful of days each winter, if that, and hailing from Michigan he isn't familiar with any surface besides hardpack. I'd point him down what's normally a groomer (but certainly wasn't today!) while I'd nibble at the edges, shortcut corners, or occasionally take an alternate route. Those latter two strategies resulted in non-stop face shots and occasional total white room.
Today was full-on storm day skiing. UDOT decided to close the canyon for avalanche control at 2 p.m., so Tcope, Tom and Evan split to beat the road closure while I connected with Arnie, Kay, Jonathan, Alex and rdwore for non-stop powder laps all the way to 4:45 p.m. It positively nuked all day long, and with so few other folks at Alta today we literally had free refills on each run.
However, with traffic at a standstill trying to get out of the parking lot, instead of trying to leave we all joined other friends in the GMD Saloon for beers until I judged the situation acceptable at 5:50 p.m. and headed out, leaving the others to party on. By that time, it was an easy 30 minutes to get out of the canyon with smoothly flowing traffic.
And yeah...we're finally over that magic 100-inch base, baby! \
/ 258 inches of snowfall season to date, and it's only 3 weeks into January.
But busted in the right way. The forecast was for 5-10" by Saturday evening, or 6-12" depending on whose forecast you looked at. Instead, the storm total by closing bell today was a remarkable 31". Rdwore proclaimed that in 50 years of skiing a crazy number of days each season, today was right up there with the best he's ever experienced.
I also set a personal record today, but not a good one. Although I left home at 8:15 a.m. the 20-minute drive from my house to Goldminer's Daughter today took 1 hour and 50 minutes, and I place the blame squarely on Unified Police Department. The LCC Road went to 4x4 or chains only at 10 p.m. last night, so this was a surprise to no one, especially the police. Even though UPD places officers at the mouth of the canyon to check for chains or 4x4 and snow tires on days that seemingly don't need it, they inexplicably had no one checking today. Once the grade of the road increased between A Gate and B Gate, people started spinning out and getting stuck, gumming up the works. That road was greaseball, for I even know people with all-wheel drive vehicles that couldn't make it and got stuck. Even in my 4WD Tacoma with the proper tires I found myself occasionally losing traction and hoping for the best. I live right at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon, and just to get from there to the merge at the mouth of Little Cottonwood took an astonishing 1 hour 10 minutes by itself. It was ridiculous to just be sitting there, not even yet in the mountains and still not moving, when the problem could have been avoided had the proper enforcement of the road restrictions taken place. Wake up, UPD, and start handing out some hefty fines to violators and send their asses back down the canyon! Not only will you help alleviate the situation, but sufficiently stiff fines will get the word out that it's not worth it to try to pull off the drive without the required equipment. If people suffer no consequences, that word will get out, too, and more and more morons will try this stunt and make the situation far worse than it already is.
I went early; those who planned to arrive a little later had it far, far worse. Another friend I spoke with left his house in Taylorsville around 9 a.m., and it took him a mind boggling 4 hours from 9400 S in Sandy to reach Alta. Strangely, for those of us who made it up in less time, that was a windfall, for Alta was absolutely deserted -- and I mean zero liftlines with nearly three feet of new snow -- until around 2 p.m. when the Collins liftline finally grew to an unmanageable 90 seconds. :lol: We literally skied untracked powder from opening to the closing bell just because no one could get up the road. (Yeah, some of us who left 30 minutes before I did actually made it in time for opening.)
I spent my morning tooling around with Tcope, as we've been meaning to ski together this season. He only skis a handful of days each winter, if that, and hailing from Michigan he isn't familiar with any surface besides hardpack. I'd point him down what's normally a groomer (but certainly wasn't today!) while I'd nibble at the edges, shortcut corners, or occasionally take an alternate route. Those latter two strategies resulted in non-stop face shots and occasional total white room.
Today was full-on storm day skiing. UDOT decided to close the canyon for avalanche control at 2 p.m., so Tcope, Tom and Evan split to beat the road closure while I connected with Arnie, Kay, Jonathan, Alex and rdwore for non-stop powder laps all the way to 4:45 p.m. It positively nuked all day long, and with so few other folks at Alta today we literally had free refills on each run.
However, with traffic at a standstill trying to get out of the parking lot, instead of trying to leave we all joined other friends in the GMD Saloon for beers until I judged the situation acceptable at 5:50 p.m. and headed out, leaving the others to party on. By that time, it was an easy 30 minutes to get out of the canyon with smoothly flowing traffic.
And yeah...we're finally over that magic 100-inch base, baby! \
/ 258 inches of snowfall season to date, and it's only 3 weeks into January.