Snowbird-Alta, UT 5/18/08

[Admin]

Day 61: See day 60. (http://www.firsttracksonline.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=6823)

Sunday was a carbon copy of Saturday, except that:

1. I forgot my camera for the first time in I can't remember how long (I used my Treo for a couple of shots below).
2. We ventured into Alta.
3. Sheahunter's better half Robin was in town from NY for a day of skiing ahead of a business meeting.
4. Skidog was absent. Bobby Danger and Marc_C were back for more.

Alta still has wall-to-wall coverage, which we found on our first run after riding up Peruvian, traveling through the tunnel and heading back up Mineral Basin Express. We hiked up to the High Baldy Traverse and struck out past Memorial Buttress to where the Baldy Shoulder gate is. We skied Tombstone, caught a fast traverse to the top of Wildcat, then headed down through Wildcat to Westward Ho. It was a great side-trip on a great day.

We all got a kick out of listening to Robin say over and over how the snow "exceeded her expectations." Once again, by 2 pm things started getting heavy and we packed it in with a beer along the Bypass Road.

My face is cooked from the blazing sunshine this weekend. I'd still have a glow at work all week nonetheless.

 

[Tony Crocker]

It would have been hard for me to resist the fall line below Memorial Buttress in that corn snow and keep slogging on into Alta. Wasn't that where you spotted Junior Bounous in June 2005?

 

[Admin]

It would have been hard for me to resist the fall line below Memorial Buttress in that corn snow and keep slogging on into Alta.

Aspect and timing, m'boy...aspect and timing. North Baldy was hard as a rock first run, while the northeast-facing Baldy Shoulder was in its prime. The slide-for-life potential on the High Baldy Traverse at that hour was downright unnerving.

We had planned to return to North Baldy right after lunch, but by that point similar aspects proved that we would have been slogging up there to reach only unsupportable mush.