Day 63: A tale of two ski days.
That pretty much worked out.
The winds were blowing my truck all around I-215 en route to Alta yesterday, even down in the Salt Lake Valley. It barely got below freezing on the mountain Saturday night, but those winds and thick cloud cover ensured that nothing at all would soften. The morning was, uh..."character building," to put it charitably. Groomers were firm and fast with a slight bit of wind sift, but anywhere we went on the ungroomed looking for where the snow was deposited, all we found were frozen chicken heads. Were it not for the promise of the storm moving in I would've headed home for the day after only a run or two.
As late morning arrived there was still no sign of the front. I kept checking radar and saw it getting closer slowly but steadily. So, too, were lightning strikes from thunderstorms embedded within the front. We opted for an early lunch at 11:30 in the hope that we'd get more ski time after the front.
The front arrived in full force slightly behind schedule at 1 p.m.:
We were instantly pelted with some of the biggest grains of graupel that I've ever seen. Driven by the wind it painfully stung our faces. We opted to retreat for a quick coffee to let it accumulate, and as we sat there with a hot cup of joe the graupel gradually transitioned to legitimate flakes. The nearest lightning strike that I was able to detect with my phone remained six miles away near the mouth of the canyon, thus the lifts kept running unabated.
After coffee, Bobby Danger inexplicably left for the day. So did a whole lot of other people, so while the morning was relatively quiet to begin with we very nearly had the storm to enjoy by ourselves. Each run just kept getting better and better so I kept going all the way to the closing bell, loading Collins for our last run at 4:20. The lift was silent by the time we returned to GMD.
I ended up with perhaps my best ice beard ever:
Alta reported two inches by the close of business, but it was hard to tell how much had been received due to the gusting winds blowing the snow around. We certainly found runs with much deeper new snow than that and snow levels even reached down to my home at 5,000 feet:
This morning's reported storm total is 13", slightly exceeding the 6-12" that had been forecast.
Yesterday morning in a post located at [url=http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11442#p71934 said:
That pretty much worked out.
The winds were blowing my truck all around I-215 en route to Alta yesterday, even down in the Salt Lake Valley. It barely got below freezing on the mountain Saturday night, but those winds and thick cloud cover ensured that nothing at all would soften. The morning was, uh..."character building," to put it charitably. Groomers were firm and fast with a slight bit of wind sift, but anywhere we went on the ungroomed looking for where the snow was deposited, all we found were frozen chicken heads. Were it not for the promise of the storm moving in I would've headed home for the day after only a run or two.
As late morning arrived there was still no sign of the front. I kept checking radar and saw it getting closer slowly but steadily. So, too, were lightning strikes from thunderstorms embedded within the front. We opted for an early lunch at 11:30 in the hope that we'd get more ski time after the front.
The front arrived in full force slightly behind schedule at 1 p.m.:
We were instantly pelted with some of the biggest grains of graupel that I've ever seen. Driven by the wind it painfully stung our faces. We opted to retreat for a quick coffee to let it accumulate, and as we sat there with a hot cup of joe the graupel gradually transitioned to legitimate flakes. The nearest lightning strike that I was able to detect with my phone remained six miles away near the mouth of the canyon, thus the lifts kept running unabated.
After coffee, Bobby Danger inexplicably left for the day. So did a whole lot of other people, so while the morning was relatively quiet to begin with we very nearly had the storm to enjoy by ourselves. Each run just kept getting better and better so I kept going all the way to the closing bell, loading Collins for our last run at 4:20. The lift was silent by the time we returned to GMD.
I ended up with perhaps my best ice beard ever:
Alta reported two inches by the close of business, but it was hard to tell how much had been received due to the gusting winds blowing the snow around. We certainly found runs with much deeper new snow than that and snow levels even reached down to my home at 5,000 feet:
This morning's reported storm total is 13", slightly exceeding the 6-12" that had been forecast.