Brian Head is about halfway to Vail for our road trip so we took a break to ski a morning here. It was an easy call to take half day tickets for $44 (9:30AM-1:00PM, though full day is $54) with the long drive ahead.
The longest lift Giant Steps was converted to high speed this season, so we started with 5 runs there. Brian Head had one big 3-foot storm around Christmas, otherwise it’s been a slow start. The Dunes lift is high on the mountain but partly south facing and is not open yet. Most of the skiing on Giant Steps is on groomers. We started inspecting short ungroomed lines riding the lift. Liz below a short mogul section on Giant Steps.
Here we’re at the top of Engen’s, which was the longest ungroomed section we skied from the Giant Steps lift.
In the background are the Navajo Mt. runs across the road.
We took the Alpen Way catwalk to the Wildflower lift to check that out. Most of the Wildflower/Navajo terrain is green, but only a few of the runs were open due to snow cover. The action at Brian Head today was mostly at the Navajo Lodge and the true beginner area served by the short Pioneer chair.
We worked our way back to Giant Steps and then traversed over to the Roulette chair on the north side. Grooming was limited but so was skier traffic and natural coverage was better. View from the top of Roulette toward Giant Steps.
Liz skiing mostly smooth chalky snow on a couple of the Roulette runs.
Less tracked snow off the trails was stiff and irregular, so we stayed away from that. We heard that Brian Head has seen some rain this season, very rare with the 9,700 foot base elevation. I suspect that was in early December when that happened in the SoCal and Arizona mountains. We did not see any ice glaze or hard crust. There was only a bit of melt/freeze on south facing slopes.
As most of us know there is not much in the way of steep terrain at Brian Head. But there is a lot of wide open area with stunted trees that would be fun with a normal snowpack and some fresher snow.
Weather was thick overcast with occasional fog at the top of Giant Steps. It started snowing lightly about noon, and we were on the road by 1:30.
The longest lift Giant Steps was converted to high speed this season, so we started with 5 runs there. Brian Head had one big 3-foot storm around Christmas, otherwise it’s been a slow start. The Dunes lift is high on the mountain but partly south facing and is not open yet. Most of the skiing on Giant Steps is on groomers. We started inspecting short ungroomed lines riding the lift. Liz below a short mogul section on Giant Steps.
Here we’re at the top of Engen’s, which was the longest ungroomed section we skied from the Giant Steps lift.
In the background are the Navajo Mt. runs across the road.
We took the Alpen Way catwalk to the Wildflower lift to check that out. Most of the Wildflower/Navajo terrain is green, but only a few of the runs were open due to snow cover. The action at Brian Head today was mostly at the Navajo Lodge and the true beginner area served by the short Pioneer chair.
We worked our way back to Giant Steps and then traversed over to the Roulette chair on the north side. Grooming was limited but so was skier traffic and natural coverage was better. View from the top of Roulette toward Giant Steps.
Liz skiing mostly smooth chalky snow on a couple of the Roulette runs.
Less tracked snow off the trails was stiff and irregular, so we stayed away from that. We heard that Brian Head has seen some rain this season, very rare with the 9,700 foot base elevation. I suspect that was in early December when that happened in the SoCal and Arizona mountains. We did not see any ice glaze or hard crust. There was only a bit of melt/freeze on south facing slopes.
As most of us know there is not much in the way of steep terrain at Brian Head. But there is a lot of wide open area with stunted trees that would be fun with a normal snowpack and some fresher snow.
Weather was thick overcast with occasional fog at the top of Giant Steps. It started snowing lightly about noon, and we were on the road by 1:30.