With warm weather remimniscent of many of my Iron Blosam trips, I was once again struck by the vast disparity in conditions in LCC vs. the Park City group. As I expected, all of the north facing steeps at Snowbird retained winter snow conditions. Due to the previous 2 windy days there was also soft blow-in snow in leeward exposures like Upper Silver Fox/Primrose and the Upper Cirque. The most dramatic effect was in Mineral basin, which had been closed Thursday for high wind. The Powder Paradise side of the lift had chalky windbuff.
The wind had also packed the sunny areas, so most of those had smooth corn by the time I got back there ~10:30AM. In normal years the slots near the lift are mogul runs with variable snow and sketchy chokepoints. With this year's snowpack they were almost corn cruisers.
I took 5 runs in Mineral Basin and ran into Pat after 3 of them. At 12:15 we headed down to lunch via a beauuutifully (to paraphrase BobbyD) windsifted Upper Silver Fox.
We also encountered Rob and Nikki on the way down. Pat and I both thought Nikki had outgrown her beginner skis, so after lunch she got some K2 Lotta Luv demos for the afternoon. Meanwhile Pat and I skied the Upper Cirque
and then met Admin, Malcolm and Gavin in the Plaza.
We headed up the tram and skied Hourglass on the way to meeting Rob and Nikki at the top of Gadzoom. A couple of pics below Hourglass.
We skied upper Wilbere Bowl before cutting over to Lone Pine. A couple of pics of Admin and one of Rob in Wilbere Bowl.
Lower Lone Pine was good enough by my SoCal standards, and I did want to make last tram. The reason was North Chute, which has only been adequately covered in May 2005 among previous seasons I've skied Snowbird.
North Chute was smooth chalk above its choke but soft windsift below that.
23,500 vertical, every run of high quality in both terrain and snow.
The wind had also packed the sunny areas, so most of those had smooth corn by the time I got back there ~10:30AM. In normal years the slots near the lift are mogul runs with variable snow and sketchy chokepoints. With this year's snowpack they were almost corn cruisers.
I took 5 runs in Mineral Basin and ran into Pat after 3 of them. At 12:15 we headed down to lunch via a beauuutifully (to paraphrase BobbyD) windsifted Upper Silver Fox.
We also encountered Rob and Nikki on the way down. Pat and I both thought Nikki had outgrown her beginner skis, so after lunch she got some K2 Lotta Luv demos for the afternoon. Meanwhile Pat and I skied the Upper Cirque
and then met Admin, Malcolm and Gavin in the Plaza.
We headed up the tram and skied Hourglass on the way to meeting Rob and Nikki at the top of Gadzoom. A couple of pics below Hourglass.
We skied upper Wilbere Bowl before cutting over to Lone Pine. A couple of pics of Admin and one of Rob in Wilbere Bowl.
Lower Lone Pine was good enough by my SoCal standards, and I did want to make last tram. The reason was North Chute, which has only been adequately covered in May 2005 among previous seasons I've skied Snowbird.
North Chute was smooth chalk above its choke but soft windsift below that.
23,500 vertical, every run of high quality in both terrain and snow.