Day 17: Zoo week officially arrives.
Little Cottonwood Canyon hit capacity today. I overslept and left the house at 8:30 instead of 8:15 and the merge at the mouth of the canyon was already backed up to the fire house on Wasatch Blvd. for no apparent reason other than congestion. Snowbird Creekside was full by 9:15, and at the rate that cars were entering Entry 2 that could not have been far behind. When I left at 1:45 cars were parked along the road in Alta and for the entire length of Snowbird from Entry 4 down to Entry 1.
Oddly, though, the hill never felt that busy. That was largely in part to the temperatures that stuck in the single digits all day. On-mountain restaurants like Alf's were packed while liftlines at Sugarloaf were perhaps 45 seconds long. The longest line we encountered was 7 minutes for Collins at prime time mid-morning. And because I overslept I never checked the weather before getting dressed this morning and leaving the house. I absolutely froze all day long.
Perhaps the biggest shocker of the day came on our first run. We jerked around in GMD to allow the pre-opening line to evaporate, so I'm guessing that we didn't load Collins until close to 9:30. That meant that there were literally hundreds of skiers ahead of us. Now, Main Street never opened yesterday due to the avalanche danger from the Baldy Chutes and Baldy Shoulder above. Today there were three "OPEN" signs across the entrance to Main Street where it splits off from Mambo, and Main Street hadn't been groomed. That means that 20" of unblemished snow sat upon it. Yet, not a single person opted to head down Main Street! :shock: Everyone before us had turned right onto Mambo to head down the groomer. That meant that the entire upper right quadrant of Collins Gulch was ours for the taking without a single track in sight.
Freakin' amazing. And by the time we skied back to the bottom, went through the lift line and rode Collins again, perhaps only 30 to 35 skiers had followed where we broke trail that first run, so we got to do it all over again. :lol:
With those temperatures and the 5% water content of the 20-inch snowfall that finally wound down overnight, things stayed soft and fluffy. ASP put in some extensive control work on Backside but we never got the rope drop today. Base depths are now at six feet. And surpringly, at noon it started snowing again in earnest even though there's no organized weather system in the neighborhood.
The next one comes in Saturday night into Monday morning, with another fluffy, light 6-12" predicted.
Little Cottonwood Canyon hit capacity today. I overslept and left the house at 8:30 instead of 8:15 and the merge at the mouth of the canyon was already backed up to the fire house on Wasatch Blvd. for no apparent reason other than congestion. Snowbird Creekside was full by 9:15, and at the rate that cars were entering Entry 2 that could not have been far behind. When I left at 1:45 cars were parked along the road in Alta and for the entire length of Snowbird from Entry 4 down to Entry 1.
Oddly, though, the hill never felt that busy. That was largely in part to the temperatures that stuck in the single digits all day. On-mountain restaurants like Alf's were packed while liftlines at Sugarloaf were perhaps 45 seconds long. The longest line we encountered was 7 minutes for Collins at prime time mid-morning. And because I overslept I never checked the weather before getting dressed this morning and leaving the house. I absolutely froze all day long.
Perhaps the biggest shocker of the day came on our first run. We jerked around in GMD to allow the pre-opening line to evaporate, so I'm guessing that we didn't load Collins until close to 9:30. That meant that there were literally hundreds of skiers ahead of us. Now, Main Street never opened yesterday due to the avalanche danger from the Baldy Chutes and Baldy Shoulder above. Today there were three "OPEN" signs across the entrance to Main Street where it splits off from Mambo, and Main Street hadn't been groomed. That means that 20" of unblemished snow sat upon it. Yet, not a single person opted to head down Main Street! :shock: Everyone before us had turned right onto Mambo to head down the groomer. That meant that the entire upper right quadrant of Collins Gulch was ours for the taking without a single track in sight.
Freakin' amazing. And by the time we skied back to the bottom, went through the lift line and rode Collins again, perhaps only 30 to 35 skiers had followed where we broke trail that first run, so we got to do it all over again. :lol:
With those temperatures and the 5% water content of the 20-inch snowfall that finally wound down overnight, things stayed soft and fluffy. ASP put in some extensive control work on Backside but we never got the rope drop today. Base depths are now at six feet. And surpringly, at noon it started snowing again in earnest even though there's no organized weather system in the neighborhood.
The next one comes in Saturday night into Monday morning, with another fluffy, light 6-12" predicted.