Days 6 & 7.
I was supposed to go up on Thursday, but never made it as I was up until 2 am Wednesday night making homemade Italian sausage stuffing for Thanksgiving. I was supposed to go up on Friday, but I overslept until 11am following the Thanksgiving feast at our home attended by Marc_C, Skidog, Bobby Danger and others. Before I knew it I had jerked around until nearly 2pm, and by then it wasn't worth it.
I finally got up on the hill on Saturday. What I had missed Thursday/Friday was a fairly terrific wind event for these parts that scoured some exposed areas down to bare dirt. But it deposited thick wind sift on the leeward sides of ridges, which made for some mighty fine skiing at Alta on Saturday with Bobby Danger and Skidog.
We managed to find untracked snow by traversing out across Ballroom and Baldy shoulder, then following a creative line by dropping two turns in Tombstone and traversing over to beneath Bad News Cliffs. The only people out there before us were patrollers, and by the time we skied to the bottom and returned there were still no other tracks besides ours.
We were the same three who joined up at 9am this morning under beautiful blue skies. Both days felt remarkably quiet at Alta, and until around 11am you felt like you had the place to yourself. Every couple of runs we'd head over to Sugarloaf just for a change of scenery.
At lunchtime Skidog headed home and Amy joined us after flying back this morning from Thanksgiving in New York with family. After a couple of Alta runs we walked out into the parking lot, piled into my car and headed down the street to Snowbird to check things over there, starting off with a hairball run down the Chickadee Chutes. :^o
The scene over at Snowbird was markedly different. They were running the Tram and Gadzoom, but unlike next door they were keeping people confined to basically one route covered with manmade snow via Regulator, down past Gadzoom, through Times Square to Big Emma. We managed to have Regulator to ourselves by letting each cabin load depart from Hidden Peak before setting off ourselves. Below the top of Gadzoom, though, there was much more traffic. Big Emma itself was a killing field, loaded with quite a few folks who really had no business being there.
After two Tram laps my legs were toast and I called it a day at 2:45 while Amy and Bobby kept things going back at Alta.
I was supposed to go up on Thursday, but never made it as I was up until 2 am Wednesday night making homemade Italian sausage stuffing for Thanksgiving. I was supposed to go up on Friday, but I overslept until 11am following the Thanksgiving feast at our home attended by Marc_C, Skidog, Bobby Danger and others. Before I knew it I had jerked around until nearly 2pm, and by then it wasn't worth it.
I finally got up on the hill on Saturday. What I had missed Thursday/Friday was a fairly terrific wind event for these parts that scoured some exposed areas down to bare dirt. But it deposited thick wind sift on the leeward sides of ridges, which made for some mighty fine skiing at Alta on Saturday with Bobby Danger and Skidog.
We managed to find untracked snow by traversing out across Ballroom and Baldy shoulder, then following a creative line by dropping two turns in Tombstone and traversing over to beneath Bad News Cliffs. The only people out there before us were patrollers, and by the time we skied to the bottom and returned there were still no other tracks besides ours.
We were the same three who joined up at 9am this morning under beautiful blue skies. Both days felt remarkably quiet at Alta, and until around 11am you felt like you had the place to yourself. Every couple of runs we'd head over to Sugarloaf just for a change of scenery.
At lunchtime Skidog headed home and Amy joined us after flying back this morning from Thanksgiving in New York with family. After a couple of Alta runs we walked out into the parking lot, piled into my car and headed down the street to Snowbird to check things over there, starting off with a hairball run down the Chickadee Chutes. :^o
The scene over at Snowbird was markedly different. They were running the Tram and Gadzoom, but unlike next door they were keeping people confined to basically one route covered with manmade snow via Regulator, down past Gadzoom, through Times Square to Big Emma. We managed to have Regulator to ourselves by letting each cabin load depart from Hidden Peak before setting off ourselves. Below the top of Gadzoom, though, there was much more traffic. Big Emma itself was a killing field, loaded with quite a few folks who really had no business being there.
After two Tram laps my legs were toast and I called it a day at 2:45 while Amy and Bobby kept things going back at Alta.
