Timing is everything.
The kid and I decided to mix things up a bit and head to Park City Mountain Resort today. Too bad our 13" or so that was forecast turned out to be a bit of a bust. PCMR was reporting 5" of new today, but as you'll see that seemed a bit conservative. (Things were unusually upside down today, as Alta by contrast was reporting 3" of new at 5 a.m. It's usually the other way around.)
We wanted to maximize our powder turns today, so we left the house in time to make the resort's 8:30 a.m. holiday opening. I've got to admit that there's something to be said for booting up in a heated underground garage, then taking an elevator right next to the car to plaza level. I must be getting soft in my old age. :lol:
We got in the Payday line at 8:23, and therefore were among the first to head up...to a rope. They continued doing avi control work on Ski Team Ridge until 9 a.m. A large group formed at the rope, and folks were getting restless. Finally, the patroller manning the rope almost got out, "OK, everyone, slowly now..." before the mad crush poled and skated as quickly as possible to the Bonanza loading ramp. Slowly now? Yeah, right. :roll:
Wind was howling and snow still falling at an impressive rate as we headed down Double Jack towards the Thaynes lift. The upper section had been hit hard by the aforementioned wind, and the varying densities of new snow it deposited were tricky atop yesterday's spring-like bumps, now refrozen to a bulletproof state. Halfway to the Thaynes lift, however, we apparently dipped below the wind line and enjoyed consistent turns for the rest of the way to the loading area.
Atop Thaynes we noticed the gate to Blueslip Bowl was open, and we were among the first couple of folks to dive in (remember, we had been on roughly the first half dozen chairs up Bonanza). Yee-haa! Boot-top untracked down through the steep trees just to skier's left of the Pioneer liftline. The aspect sheltered us completely from the prevailing winds, too, and they had clearly deposited much additional snow into the Bowl. They were still bombing McConkey's, so we took multiple laps on Pioneer waiting for McConkey's to open. We found trackless aspen trees on 10th Mountain ridge, but a sun crust underneath funneled us into steep chutes to skier's left, dropping us back down to Lucky Boy. We repeated, taking a steep line through the firs between our first and second routes. We reached the bottom right as McConkey's opened, and we were among the first 20 or so chairs heading up.
Our first run was through the trees to skier's left of the top of the chair, then angling down into McConkey's Bowl from the north through untracked boot-top. The surface had been blown smooth, but piston legs were required to absorb the hard bumps underneath. Still, this was one of the runs of the day. We headed back up to the steep, tight uncleared trees of Black Forest, where the combination of pitch and spacing freaked the kid out slightly. We then dropped in a bit further down Tycoon, and kept working the hill by traversing right whenever we ran out of slope. This was much more to his liking.
We took one last ride on McConkey's to drop into the cleared narrow lines through the trees just to skier's right of McConkey's Bowl before going with a hunch. The sound of the exploding avi bombs verified that they were becoming less and less frequent, so we boarded Pioneer again to see what was going on at the top. By this point the snow had stopped, the wind had abated, and the skies had broken to partly sunny. Sure enough, we arrived to find the rope dropped on Jupiter Access. We sped down to find ourselves on about the 20th Jupe chair of the day. Another entire bowl of completely untracked snow awaited our turns.
On the first run, there was no point in venturing far and wide when there was barely a track right under the lift. We headed right into Main Bowl and Shadow Ridge for what probably was the run of the day. Folks were quickly discovering that the Jupe chair was running, so we became a bit more crafty on the second run, finding open slots in the trees to skier's right of Portugese Gap where no one had gone before. Boot-top snow sloughed down below through the trees with each turn. We took another run out there, this time venturing further out and finding more lines completely untracked.
The line at Jupiter continued to grow, although still under 10 minutes, but we opted to do some more exploring. We caught a chair on Motherlode and sampled more untracked snow through the aspen stands between Single Jack and Fool's Gold all the way back down to Thaynes Canyon. The dogs by this point, they were a'barkin', so we continued down to King Con and dropped into more untracked aspens to skier's left of Erika's Gold, although I'll readily admit that the crust beneath the new snow that low was starting to get punchy. By the time we got down to Ladies' SL, even the skied-up stuff was miserably scratchy. As was to be expected with the past week's weather, staying up high all day was the place to be. We quit at 1 pm, 4.5 nonstop hours and 17,500 vertical feet after we started. Hard to believe, but we managed to score completely untracked turns on each and every one of those runs. Liftlines smack dab in the middle of a holiday week ranged from 0-10 minutes all day for us, usually in the 1-2 minute range. I was really impressed with PCMR today. As nearly the entire mountain lies below treeline, it's a great place for a storm day when the LCC resorts are in vertiginous whiteout conditions.
Looking back on the day, we realized that we caught each successive lift opening like clockwork: Pioneer, McConkey's, and Jupiter. Like I said...timing is everything.
The kid and I decided to mix things up a bit and head to Park City Mountain Resort today. Too bad our 13" or so that was forecast turned out to be a bit of a bust. PCMR was reporting 5" of new today, but as you'll see that seemed a bit conservative. (Things were unusually upside down today, as Alta by contrast was reporting 3" of new at 5 a.m. It's usually the other way around.)
We wanted to maximize our powder turns today, so we left the house in time to make the resort's 8:30 a.m. holiday opening. I've got to admit that there's something to be said for booting up in a heated underground garage, then taking an elevator right next to the car to plaza level. I must be getting soft in my old age. :lol:
We got in the Payday line at 8:23, and therefore were among the first to head up...to a rope. They continued doing avi control work on Ski Team Ridge until 9 a.m. A large group formed at the rope, and folks were getting restless. Finally, the patroller manning the rope almost got out, "OK, everyone, slowly now..." before the mad crush poled and skated as quickly as possible to the Bonanza loading ramp. Slowly now? Yeah, right. :roll:
Wind was howling and snow still falling at an impressive rate as we headed down Double Jack towards the Thaynes lift. The upper section had been hit hard by the aforementioned wind, and the varying densities of new snow it deposited were tricky atop yesterday's spring-like bumps, now refrozen to a bulletproof state. Halfway to the Thaynes lift, however, we apparently dipped below the wind line and enjoyed consistent turns for the rest of the way to the loading area.
Atop Thaynes we noticed the gate to Blueslip Bowl was open, and we were among the first couple of folks to dive in (remember, we had been on roughly the first half dozen chairs up Bonanza). Yee-haa! Boot-top untracked down through the steep trees just to skier's left of the Pioneer liftline. The aspect sheltered us completely from the prevailing winds, too, and they had clearly deposited much additional snow into the Bowl. They were still bombing McConkey's, so we took multiple laps on Pioneer waiting for McConkey's to open. We found trackless aspen trees on 10th Mountain ridge, but a sun crust underneath funneled us into steep chutes to skier's left, dropping us back down to Lucky Boy. We repeated, taking a steep line through the firs between our first and second routes. We reached the bottom right as McConkey's opened, and we were among the first 20 or so chairs heading up.
Our first run was through the trees to skier's left of the top of the chair, then angling down into McConkey's Bowl from the north through untracked boot-top. The surface had been blown smooth, but piston legs were required to absorb the hard bumps underneath. Still, this was one of the runs of the day. We headed back up to the steep, tight uncleared trees of Black Forest, where the combination of pitch and spacing freaked the kid out slightly. We then dropped in a bit further down Tycoon, and kept working the hill by traversing right whenever we ran out of slope. This was much more to his liking.
We took one last ride on McConkey's to drop into the cleared narrow lines through the trees just to skier's right of McConkey's Bowl before going with a hunch. The sound of the exploding avi bombs verified that they were becoming less and less frequent, so we boarded Pioneer again to see what was going on at the top. By this point the snow had stopped, the wind had abated, and the skies had broken to partly sunny. Sure enough, we arrived to find the rope dropped on Jupiter Access. We sped down to find ourselves on about the 20th Jupe chair of the day. Another entire bowl of completely untracked snow awaited our turns.
On the first run, there was no point in venturing far and wide when there was barely a track right under the lift. We headed right into Main Bowl and Shadow Ridge for what probably was the run of the day. Folks were quickly discovering that the Jupe chair was running, so we became a bit more crafty on the second run, finding open slots in the trees to skier's right of Portugese Gap where no one had gone before. Boot-top snow sloughed down below through the trees with each turn. We took another run out there, this time venturing further out and finding more lines completely untracked.
The line at Jupiter continued to grow, although still under 10 minutes, but we opted to do some more exploring. We caught a chair on Motherlode and sampled more untracked snow through the aspen stands between Single Jack and Fool's Gold all the way back down to Thaynes Canyon. The dogs by this point, they were a'barkin', so we continued down to King Con and dropped into more untracked aspens to skier's left of Erika's Gold, although I'll readily admit that the crust beneath the new snow that low was starting to get punchy. By the time we got down to Ladies' SL, even the skied-up stuff was miserably scratchy. As was to be expected with the past week's weather, staying up high all day was the place to be. We quit at 1 pm, 4.5 nonstop hours and 17,500 vertical feet after we started. Hard to believe, but we managed to score completely untracked turns on each and every one of those runs. Liftlines smack dab in the middle of a holiday week ranged from 0-10 minutes all day for us, usually in the 1-2 minute range. I was really impressed with PCMR today. As nearly the entire mountain lies below treeline, it's a great place for a storm day when the LCC resorts are in vertiginous whiteout conditions.
Looking back on the day, we realized that we caught each successive lift opening like clockwork: Pioneer, McConkey's, and Jupiter. Like I said...timing is everything.
