Day 24: Rime, rime, everywhere some rime
What a great day! I met up with friend Roger, visiting from Vermont, at an Einstein Bagel in SLC at 7:30 a.m. I grabbed a quick bagel, coffee and juice for the road, we stashed his rental car in a strip mall parking lot, and off we headed for Powder Mountain.
I figured that if we had any shot at freshies left over from Wednesday/Thursday morning's storm, it'd be there, and I was right. I also figured that they'd be deserted, and while I was wrong, for we encountered five-minute holiday lift lines for the new Hidden Lake Express detachable quad, PowMow's ample acreage dispersed folks such that on many runs we never saw another soul. And this was Christmas week!
It's still early conditions at Powder Mountain, for they have only a 39-inch base, and the lower mountain via the Paradise chair remains closed, as does the Powder Country bus-shuttle terrain and the Lightning Ridge snowcat area. The bulk of the ski area's whopping 5,500 acres (bigger than Vail, BTW), however, are remarkably rock-free and need very little snow to be skiable. Four out of six lifts were running.
We squeezed into the diminutive bar area to boot up amongst groups visiting from Philadelphia and Austin, say "hi" to Group Sales Manager Carolyn, and head out on the hill with Steve. Steve is a semi-retired commercial pilot, flight instructor, and is related in some manner to mountain management although precisely how I don't remember. His son is a lift maintenance manager at Deer Valley. Steve is a life-long Utahan who started skiing at Snowbasin at age 4, and given that he's retiring from flying that should give you an idea of how long he's been skiing -- and it shows.
We zipped down Short Fuse and immediately boarded the Timberline triple. Once on top, we headed across 3 Mile to reach what Steve figured to be a powder stash somewhere dropping down to East 40, but <gasp!> it was already tracked. No worries, we just continued on cord down to the new Hidden Lake Express and zipped up in six minutes what used to be an interminable 20-minute ride aboard the old chair. Good thing, too, for the wind was positively howling all morning across the ridgelines, with wispy clouds barely slipping past the treetops on the ridgelines.
Over to the Sunrise Poma, we then headed into the trees. And it's here that it all becomes a blur. I'll be darned if I can get straight in my head where all we went in which order, but we went seemingly everywhere, from trees off of Clair's Run to one of the most interesting green-circle cruisers I've done in years on Sunrise.
Powder Mountain had picked up a total of 10 inches of new snow over the preceding two days, but the trees were all decorated with something I seldom see in Utah: thick rime. It's usually too dry here to happen, but today every little branch was coated...and so was the snowpack. I'll be damned if I've ever witnessed that phenomenon before, anywhere. It was bizarre, and made for a bizarre snowpack, too: thick and heavy were the words today. It physically resembled surface hoar, but skied like cream cheese. It took a couple of runs to get used to, but eventually I managed to keep my weight centered and actually came to enjoy it. All smiles, Roger just said that I'm spoiled.
We noticed quite a few things over the course of those morning hours, though. For one, Powder Mountain has perhaps some of the best low-angle novice and low intermediate terrain anywhere off that new Hidden Lake chair. I kept thinking about how much my wife would love it, and because of Powder Mountain's upside-down configuration, spectacular views and quality snow are accessible to everyone here.
We were joined on one lift ride by Chuck, a retired Powder Mountain GM, who recounted how they laid out the mountain's ski terrain in the early years: "Hey, that must be some good skiing over there, let's go check it out!" And the next year, a surface lift would lift skiers into that next drainage. Even today, that style shows as the mountain's north-facing terrain unfolds via drainage after drainage, with lifts like the short Sunrise poma to make them accessible.
By lunch time, Steve had to head home to jet off to Atlanta for eight days of flight school, but not before he provided the opportunity to chat with Kent, the current GM. After a quick burger and beer, and an unsuccessful search for Carolyn, Roger and I headed out again.
We opted to head down to Sunset, Powder Mountain's lower base area and the site of its limited night skiing operations. We immediately noticed a gorgeous aspen stand to skier's left of Boot Hill, and tore it up not once, but twice, finding the snow in there largely untracked. Figuring that we'd milked Sunset for all it was worth, we traversed back to the main ski area via Slow Poke when we spotted treasure: Powder Chamber.
Now, I'm not sure if folks figured that they couldn't get back to open lifts if they skied it, or if we just had a view that you couldn't see from elsewhere, but acres and acres of untracked and barely tracked waited back there. A zig-zagging cat road in the form of the Sun Catcher trail also acted as a skier catcher to ensure that you didn't end up below the Timberline lift. And Roger and I yo-yo'd that terrain three, maybe four times before declaring it sufficiently tracked and moving on, but not before others followed us in and were tracking it up, too.
Next up was the Lakeview area. We had surmised that this had been fairly wind-affected and was likely rocky beneath, but the wind had since abated and we needed a new way to reach Hidden Lake. Sure enough, the open areas were heavily wind-slabbed, but by traversing to skier's left into the shelter of the aspens lining Geronimo and Tomahawk we found the blissful untracked cover that we'd been looking for.
Roger, however, was already slowing down, and by the time we traversed out Sanctuary and headed down through more aspens back to Hidden Lake Express he could barely mutter "No mas!" We headed up the chair and back to the truck via the Lodge Trail.
I love this place, and I can't believe that it took me five years to return. I can't wait to get back for more, especially once Powder Country and Lightning Ridge open.
En route home we had to stop at the Shooting Star Saloon in Huntsville to share a beer with some local color. I ordered a second, but Roger declined, fearing that a second beer would put him to sleep on the ride home. I think we killed him. :wink: No worries, though, for he has an early-morning flight home to Vermont to recuperate.
It was heavy snow, but we skied a powder day nonetheless. We really racked up the vertical today, but I actually forgot to turn the S6 on to log it. #-o
What a great day! I met up with friend Roger, visiting from Vermont, at an Einstein Bagel in SLC at 7:30 a.m. I grabbed a quick bagel, coffee and juice for the road, we stashed his rental car in a strip mall parking lot, and off we headed for Powder Mountain.
I figured that if we had any shot at freshies left over from Wednesday/Thursday morning's storm, it'd be there, and I was right. I also figured that they'd be deserted, and while I was wrong, for we encountered five-minute holiday lift lines for the new Hidden Lake Express detachable quad, PowMow's ample acreage dispersed folks such that on many runs we never saw another soul. And this was Christmas week!
It's still early conditions at Powder Mountain, for they have only a 39-inch base, and the lower mountain via the Paradise chair remains closed, as does the Powder Country bus-shuttle terrain and the Lightning Ridge snowcat area. The bulk of the ski area's whopping 5,500 acres (bigger than Vail, BTW), however, are remarkably rock-free and need very little snow to be skiable. Four out of six lifts were running.
We squeezed into the diminutive bar area to boot up amongst groups visiting from Philadelphia and Austin, say "hi" to Group Sales Manager Carolyn, and head out on the hill with Steve. Steve is a semi-retired commercial pilot, flight instructor, and is related in some manner to mountain management although precisely how I don't remember. His son is a lift maintenance manager at Deer Valley. Steve is a life-long Utahan who started skiing at Snowbasin at age 4, and given that he's retiring from flying that should give you an idea of how long he's been skiing -- and it shows.
We zipped down Short Fuse and immediately boarded the Timberline triple. Once on top, we headed across 3 Mile to reach what Steve figured to be a powder stash somewhere dropping down to East 40, but <gasp!> it was already tracked. No worries, we just continued on cord down to the new Hidden Lake Express and zipped up in six minutes what used to be an interminable 20-minute ride aboard the old chair. Good thing, too, for the wind was positively howling all morning across the ridgelines, with wispy clouds barely slipping past the treetops on the ridgelines.
Over to the Sunrise Poma, we then headed into the trees. And it's here that it all becomes a blur. I'll be darned if I can get straight in my head where all we went in which order, but we went seemingly everywhere, from trees off of Clair's Run to one of the most interesting green-circle cruisers I've done in years on Sunrise.
Powder Mountain had picked up a total of 10 inches of new snow over the preceding two days, but the trees were all decorated with something I seldom see in Utah: thick rime. It's usually too dry here to happen, but today every little branch was coated...and so was the snowpack. I'll be damned if I've ever witnessed that phenomenon before, anywhere. It was bizarre, and made for a bizarre snowpack, too: thick and heavy were the words today. It physically resembled surface hoar, but skied like cream cheese. It took a couple of runs to get used to, but eventually I managed to keep my weight centered and actually came to enjoy it. All smiles, Roger just said that I'm spoiled.
We noticed quite a few things over the course of those morning hours, though. For one, Powder Mountain has perhaps some of the best low-angle novice and low intermediate terrain anywhere off that new Hidden Lake chair. I kept thinking about how much my wife would love it, and because of Powder Mountain's upside-down configuration, spectacular views and quality snow are accessible to everyone here.
We were joined on one lift ride by Chuck, a retired Powder Mountain GM, who recounted how they laid out the mountain's ski terrain in the early years: "Hey, that must be some good skiing over there, let's go check it out!" And the next year, a surface lift would lift skiers into that next drainage. Even today, that style shows as the mountain's north-facing terrain unfolds via drainage after drainage, with lifts like the short Sunrise poma to make them accessible.
By lunch time, Steve had to head home to jet off to Atlanta for eight days of flight school, but not before he provided the opportunity to chat with Kent, the current GM. After a quick burger and beer, and an unsuccessful search for Carolyn, Roger and I headed out again.
We opted to head down to Sunset, Powder Mountain's lower base area and the site of its limited night skiing operations. We immediately noticed a gorgeous aspen stand to skier's left of Boot Hill, and tore it up not once, but twice, finding the snow in there largely untracked. Figuring that we'd milked Sunset for all it was worth, we traversed back to the main ski area via Slow Poke when we spotted treasure: Powder Chamber.
Now, I'm not sure if folks figured that they couldn't get back to open lifts if they skied it, or if we just had a view that you couldn't see from elsewhere, but acres and acres of untracked and barely tracked waited back there. A zig-zagging cat road in the form of the Sun Catcher trail also acted as a skier catcher to ensure that you didn't end up below the Timberline lift. And Roger and I yo-yo'd that terrain three, maybe four times before declaring it sufficiently tracked and moving on, but not before others followed us in and were tracking it up, too.
Next up was the Lakeview area. We had surmised that this had been fairly wind-affected and was likely rocky beneath, but the wind had since abated and we needed a new way to reach Hidden Lake. Sure enough, the open areas were heavily wind-slabbed, but by traversing to skier's left into the shelter of the aspens lining Geronimo and Tomahawk we found the blissful untracked cover that we'd been looking for.
Roger, however, was already slowing down, and by the time we traversed out Sanctuary and headed down through more aspens back to Hidden Lake Express he could barely mutter "No mas!" We headed up the chair and back to the truck via the Lodge Trail.
I love this place, and I can't believe that it took me five years to return. I can't wait to get back for more, especially once Powder Country and Lightning Ridge open.
En route home we had to stop at the Shooting Star Saloon in Huntsville to share a beer with some local color. I ordered a second, but Roger declined, fearing that a second beer would put him to sleep on the ride home. I think we killed him. :wink: No worries, though, for he has an early-morning flight home to Vermont to recuperate.
It was heavy snow, but we skied a powder day nonetheless. We really racked up the vertical today, but I actually forgot to turn the S6 on to log it. #-o
Attachments
-
14 powdermt admin powderchamber 061229.jpg -
13 powdermt powderchamber 061229.jpg -
12 powdermt boothilltrees 061229.jpg -
11 powdermt roger boothilltrees 061229.jpg -
10 powdermt powderctry 061229.jpg -
09 powdermt sunrisepoma 061229.jpg -
08 powdermt cachevly 061229.jpg -
07 powdermt jamespk 061229.jpg -
05 powdermt hiddenlkexp topterm 061229.jpg -
04 powdermt glade near claires 061229.jpg -
02 powdermt breakaway 061229.jpg -
01 powdermt timberline 061229.jpg
