Alta, UT 11/29/2015

[Admin]

Day 9: Still cold.

Damned cold, actually. It was 2ºF at mid-mountain at 9 a.m., inspiring another 11:30 a.m. alpine start. The mercury topped out at a frigid 9ºF at noon today before it started dropping again, and this afternoon actually felt colder to me than any other day this long holiday weekend did.

Probably largely due to those temperatures, Alta was empty.


Chairs were going up empty at 11:45 a.m.

Light snow continued to fall throughout the day, but after an additional inch or so overnight it was pretty much just nuisance snow that fell from the skies during the day. We did score, however, when ASP dropped the rope on the lowest entrance to the High T (out as far as Race Course) just before we got to the top of Collins on our first lift ride, and we nailed the absolute first public ski tracks of the season in Fred's Trees. You had to be incredibly careful, as there's a lot of crap in there (stumps, rocks and the like), but it was good enough to go back for a second helping before that little bit of traffic rendered the area unpleasantly thin. Too bad I wasn't loose enough yet to ski it well. I'm hoping that now that the base has been skied a bit, ASP will re-close that gate to await the next snowfall; otherwise the whole Fred's/Liftline/Spruce Forest area will get hammered and will take that much longer to fill in.

As the temperature started to drop again in the afternoon we all (Bobby Danger, AmyZ, TheOtherAmy, Corey and yours truly) threw in the towel at 3 p.m. when it was back down to 7ºF.

I'll take 9 days by the end of November! I've also got a bunch of scheduled days off to ski in the first couple of weeks of December, so I'm hoping that this week's ridge of high pressure is short-lived.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I've also got a bunch of scheduled days off to ski in the first couple of weeks of December

Deja vu, some people never learn. :-k Surely another summer/fall camping trip would have been preferable to the 10% of Alta that's open now, and will be for the next 10 days if you believe OpenSnow.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

 

[Admin]

I've also got a bunch of scheduled days off to ski in the first couple of weeks of December

Deja vu, some people never learn. :-k Surely another summer/fall camping trip would have been preferable to the 10% of Alta that's open now, and will be for the next 10 days if you believe OpenSnow.

For the five thousandth time:
1. I can't just have any day off that I want.
2. I have more days than I can typically use.
3. Despite #2, it's use em or lose em.
4. How I use my days off is nobody's damned business but my own.

 

[Bobby Danger]

2 surgical runs ! i nicked a couple stumps with the tails and nothing more !!

 

[Tony Crocker]

OK, I'll make a constructive suggestion if you have to take time off now. Evan at OpenSnow says that While Utah will see minimal new snow before Dec. 10, Whistler will get 95 inches of snow in the next 5 days.

Hopefully 2016 will see a normal quota of January-April powder days in LCC to prevent a recurrence of this situation.

 

[Marc_C]

4. How I use my days off is nobody's damned business but my own.

+1
And if Tony was suggesting a camping trip now in place of skiing, well, unless you really like winter camping......
When we passed by City of Rocks in SE Idaho last Friday, the Jeep outside temps thermometer was reading 12F at 2pm. Bend OR was 4F on Saturday evening at 5pm.

 

[Tony Crocker]

My point was that if you know in August you have to take the days by first week of December, even Alta is going be limited skiing in that time frame much of the time. Therefore the bird in the hand of an interesting camping trip in Sept/Oct is likely to be more satisfying than the not unlikely scenario of motoring down the same 4 groomers for most of a week at the end of November.

If you get to push those days to mid-December, then the odds of having lots more interesting skiing go up considerably.

 

[Admin]

My point was that if you know in August you have to take the days by first week of December, even Alta is going be limited skiing in that time frame much of the time. Therefore the bird in the hand of an interesting camping trip in Sept/Oct is likely to be more satisfying than the not unlikely scenario of motoring down the same 4 groomers for most of a week at the end of November.

I got that, too: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11888

If you get to push those days to mid-December, then the odds of having lots more interesting skiing go up considerably.

Given that I got that, too, I'll let you know next week. :wink: