I headed up to Snowbasin this morning for Ski Utah's Local Media Day today, and had a blast.
The day started off with deep blue skies in the morning, and increasing high clouds in the afternoon. I arrived later than planned, at 10 am, and after a quick breakfast during boot-up I hopped on the Needles Express gondi.
Even at the relatively low elevation, east-facing Snowbasin there's plenty of snow. Their season-to-date total is 343 inches, IIRC, barely more than half of what the Cottonwood Canyons have received. Still, looking around the mountain it was hard to believe that it was April.
It was warm today. Really warm. We're talking t-shirt-and-softshell-only warm. Toward the end of the day, areas near the base felt like someone spilled a barrel of Elmer's glue upon the snow.
Up high, though, there were some delightfully dry surprises, such as the steep north-facing Lone Tree chute that drops off De Moisy Peak into the lower reaches of Middle Bowl Cirque. It was accessed by a short uphill traverse from an access gate at the top of the Strawberry Express gondi.
They had a rather challenging dual GS course set up for us on City Hill, and we were allowed as many runs as we wanted between 10 and noon and they'd take the fastest run. Racers were divided into 4 categories: Print Media, Television, Radio and PR. Despite the fact that you had to ride either the John Paul Express or the Needles Express all the way to the top to access the race course, I managed to get 4 runs in, three of which were in a duals format against Jay Burke of Solitude who positively smoked my arse by a good 4+ seconds each time. By the last run at noon sharp, the ruts and chatter marks were getting nasty from the rapidly softening snow. Despite Jay deflating my ego on each run, all but 1 of the print journalists must've been darned slow, for I managed to place 2nd to win a vacation at Powder Mountain and have a bright shiny silver medal to show for it. \
/
It was a fun day all around!
The day started off with deep blue skies in the morning, and increasing high clouds in the afternoon. I arrived later than planned, at 10 am, and after a quick breakfast during boot-up I hopped on the Needles Express gondi.
Even at the relatively low elevation, east-facing Snowbasin there's plenty of snow. Their season-to-date total is 343 inches, IIRC, barely more than half of what the Cottonwood Canyons have received. Still, looking around the mountain it was hard to believe that it was April.
It was warm today. Really warm. We're talking t-shirt-and-softshell-only warm. Toward the end of the day, areas near the base felt like someone spilled a barrel of Elmer's glue upon the snow.
Up high, though, there were some delightfully dry surprises, such as the steep north-facing Lone Tree chute that drops off De Moisy Peak into the lower reaches of Middle Bowl Cirque. It was accessed by a short uphill traverse from an access gate at the top of the Strawberry Express gondi.
They had a rather challenging dual GS course set up for us on City Hill, and we were allowed as many runs as we wanted between 10 and noon and they'd take the fastest run. Racers were divided into 4 categories: Print Media, Television, Radio and PR. Despite the fact that you had to ride either the John Paul Express or the Needles Express all the way to the top to access the race course, I managed to get 4 runs in, three of which were in a duals format against Jay Burke of Solitude who positively smoked my arse by a good 4+ seconds each time. By the last run at noon sharp, the ruts and chatter marks were getting nasty from the rapidly softening snow. Despite Jay deflating my ego on each run, all but 1 of the print journalists must've been darned slow, for I managed to place 2nd to win a vacation at Powder Mountain and have a bright shiny silver medal to show for it. \
/ It was a fun day all around!
