Day 60: For the end of April, it just doesn't get any better than this.
First, though, rewind to 6:34 a.m. When you set your alarm for 5:30 in the morning, it helps to make sure that you set it for a.m. and not p.m. 6:34 a.m. is when my phone rang. It was icelanticskier, calling from the base of Brighton as he, Craig and friends were preparing to skin up. He was wondering where I was. Roger, I'm so sorry! Bummer that I didn't join you today, but as you'll see we didn't miss out on snow quality, that's for sure. I'm sure that you folks got the goods, too, and I look forward to hearing about what I missed.
Having missed the dawn patrol skin track, I opted instead to hook up with Tele Jon, Bobby Danger and Skidog at Snowbird via a 9 a.m. rendezvous on the Tram Plaza. It snowed overnight, and it continued to snow as we boarded the Tram and headed up.
Once again, we were in the soup. The first few turns down Little Cloud Bowl were purely by braille, but by the time we worked our way over to Puckerbrush visibility improved just well enough to see the occasional chunky emerge from beneath the new snow. Those remnants from prior days' tracks were to be avoided. It was, in a word, inconsistent. You just couldn't trust it and launch into high-speed turns, lest you hit some frozen crud from the days before or a wind-scoured patch that was down to rough ice. I paused just long enough to pick a line, which was long enough to lose sight of Bobby and Skidog. Neither Jon nor I could see them at Little Cloud from the top of the now-dormant Gadzoom, so we figured that they headed for the Tram and worked our way down the mountain on groomers that had been rolled out before it started snowing overnight. We found the combination of a few inches of dense snow on smooth low angle terrain to be delightful, but little did we realize that it would pale in comparison to what we'd ski later in the day.
Jon and I took a variation of the first run to return to Little Cloud, but this time I felt that the snow was noticeably slabbier. Rejoined by Bobby and Skidog, we ventured over to Mineral Basin by the Tunnel exit and worked our way across Lupine Loop to the Sugar Cliffs ropeline down to Mineral Basin Express. This was the most vertigo-inducing run of the day, as I had absolutely no clue where the ground ended and the sky began on that final pitch below the rock band just south of the last stretch of Lupine Loop.
Next, we headed out the Mid-Cirque Traverse to hit up Lone Pine, which offered moments of brilliance interspersed with periods of chunkiness. By the time we hit the Tram Plaza Skidog realized that he'd lost his AltaBird season pass somewhere on our Lone Pine run, and because he bought it at Alta he'd have to wait until Alta's office opens up on Monday to request a replacement. So, we were down to three. Pity that Skidog would miss what was to come.
By now the snow had begun to fall in earnest, and our next run -- intended to be Chamonix 1 in Mineral Basin -- was diverted when we noticed that they'd opened the High Baldy Traverse. We were heading to Alta. \
/
I've said many times that some of the best days at Alta are after they close. Alta, of course, has been closed now for a week, and this week's 60-degree temperatures and sunny skies smoothed out any bumps that may have lurked beneath the new snow. Also noted was this morning's avi report, wherein Bruce Tremper pointed out that the mid-Collins Snotel had reported 10-inch storm totals as of 6:30 a.m., which were double that of any other reporting station in the Wasatch. Of course, more snow had fallen all morning, and by this time it was positively puking out. It must've been snowing at least two inches per hour.
None of us, however, had any idea just how amazingly good things would be over there. Much to our surprise there was hardly anyone heading into Alta. We took great care to avoid any obvious slide paths, dropping through Bad News in knee-deep, bottomless untracked. Amazing! \/ We hiked up the Wildcat Road to the top of the Wildcat lift, then headed out the traverse. I dropped into an untracked Punch Bowl, succumbing to vertigo on the second turn and face-planting, while the others skied in the trees where the rope line running skier's left of Punch Bowl is normally strung. There were less than a half dozen tracks in all of Wildcat, and we found the snow absolutely consistent, deep, trackless and bottomless. A couple of notable quotes:
After refueling with a couple of slices of pizza at the Tram Center we went back to do it again. On this lap, though, I eschewed the hike up to Wildcat, skiing down the ridge while the others hit Tombstone (which I preferred to avoid anyway due to slide danger from above), after which we re-convened at the top of Wildcat. Jon proclaimed that to be his run of the year. Back into Wildcat, our tracks from before were barely visible, and there weren't any others. Hard to believe, but the second lap was better than the first.
I'd planned to quit after that run, but seeing that the other two returned to the Tram I hurried ahead to join them for one last 3 p.m. bucket. By now the gate to the High Baldy hike was closed for the day, so we headed way down the Mid-Cirque Traverse to another line that I won't mention here, but that remained completely untracked, even at 3:15 p.m.! An amazing way to finish the day that Bobby's skiing in the first action scene in today's video:
[skitube2]http://www.firsttracksonline.com/modules/crpVideo/pnmedia/videos/1240795280_2009-04-26_AltaBird.flv[/skitube2]
I hadn't even planned to film today, but that second lap into Alta was just so good that I broke out the camera and started rolling tape. Realize that everything in that movie was filmed after ~ 2 p.m.
I'd also like to point out that, happily, Snowbird's got to be making money right now. Saturday was quite busy. Today was positively packed after, say, noon. Folks were obviously calling their friends to tell them how good it was getting. Many, many customers were skiing on day tickets. It was busy before that, but by 1 p.m. the Tram corral was completely full, even stretching outside to the east end of the building, then wrapping back past the ticket windows. Insane! Good to see from a business perspective, but it really would've been nice to have a second way up the mountain (the only lifts running were the Tram, Mineral Basin Express, Little Cloud, Chickadee and Wilbere, the latter primarily for racer access). It would've made more sense to me to take the lifties from Wilbere and Chickadee and move them to Peruvian and the Tunnel. Were it not for that Tram line we would've had time for a third lap into Alta.
First, though, rewind to 6:34 a.m. When you set your alarm for 5:30 in the morning, it helps to make sure that you set it for a.m. and not p.m. 6:34 a.m. is when my phone rang. It was icelanticskier, calling from the base of Brighton as he, Craig and friends were preparing to skin up. He was wondering where I was. Roger, I'm so sorry! Bummer that I didn't join you today, but as you'll see we didn't miss out on snow quality, that's for sure. I'm sure that you folks got the goods, too, and I look forward to hearing about what I missed.
Having missed the dawn patrol skin track, I opted instead to hook up with Tele Jon, Bobby Danger and Skidog at Snowbird via a 9 a.m. rendezvous on the Tram Plaza. It snowed overnight, and it continued to snow as we boarded the Tram and headed up.
Once again, we were in the soup. The first few turns down Little Cloud Bowl were purely by braille, but by the time we worked our way over to Puckerbrush visibility improved just well enough to see the occasional chunky emerge from beneath the new snow. Those remnants from prior days' tracks were to be avoided. It was, in a word, inconsistent. You just couldn't trust it and launch into high-speed turns, lest you hit some frozen crud from the days before or a wind-scoured patch that was down to rough ice. I paused just long enough to pick a line, which was long enough to lose sight of Bobby and Skidog. Neither Jon nor I could see them at Little Cloud from the top of the now-dormant Gadzoom, so we figured that they headed for the Tram and worked our way down the mountain on groomers that had been rolled out before it started snowing overnight. We found the combination of a few inches of dense snow on smooth low angle terrain to be delightful, but little did we realize that it would pale in comparison to what we'd ski later in the day.
Jon and I took a variation of the first run to return to Little Cloud, but this time I felt that the snow was noticeably slabbier. Rejoined by Bobby and Skidog, we ventured over to Mineral Basin by the Tunnel exit and worked our way across Lupine Loop to the Sugar Cliffs ropeline down to Mineral Basin Express. This was the most vertigo-inducing run of the day, as I had absolutely no clue where the ground ended and the sky began on that final pitch below the rock band just south of the last stretch of Lupine Loop.
Next, we headed out the Mid-Cirque Traverse to hit up Lone Pine, which offered moments of brilliance interspersed with periods of chunkiness. By the time we hit the Tram Plaza Skidog realized that he'd lost his AltaBird season pass somewhere on our Lone Pine run, and because he bought it at Alta he'd have to wait until Alta's office opens up on Monday to request a replacement. So, we were down to three. Pity that Skidog would miss what was to come.
By now the snow had begun to fall in earnest, and our next run -- intended to be Chamonix 1 in Mineral Basin -- was diverted when we noticed that they'd opened the High Baldy Traverse. We were heading to Alta. \
/ I've said many times that some of the best days at Alta are after they close. Alta, of course, has been closed now for a week, and this week's 60-degree temperatures and sunny skies smoothed out any bumps that may have lurked beneath the new snow. Also noted was this morning's avi report, wherein Bruce Tremper pointed out that the mid-Collins Snotel had reported 10-inch storm totals as of 6:30 a.m., which were double that of any other reporting station in the Wasatch. Of course, more snow had fallen all morning, and by this time it was positively puking out. It must've been snowing at least two inches per hour.
None of us, however, had any idea just how amazingly good things would be over there. Much to our surprise there was hardly anyone heading into Alta. We took great care to avoid any obvious slide paths, dropping through Bad News in knee-deep, bottomless untracked. Amazing! \
/ We hiked up the Wildcat Road to the top of the Wildcat lift, then headed out the traverse. I dropped into an untracked Punch Bowl, succumbing to vertigo on the second turn and face-planting, while the others skied in the trees where the rope line running skier's left of Punch Bowl is normally strung. There were less than a half dozen tracks in all of Wildcat, and we found the snow absolutely consistent, deep, trackless and bottomless. A couple of notable quotes:- "That was better than sex with a trained woman." - Bobby Danger
- "That was so good, there has to be something immoral about it. That can't be legal in Utah!" - Tele Jon
After refueling with a couple of slices of pizza at the Tram Center we went back to do it again. On this lap, though, I eschewed the hike up to Wildcat, skiing down the ridge while the others hit Tombstone (which I preferred to avoid anyway due to slide danger from above), after which we re-convened at the top of Wildcat. Jon proclaimed that to be his run of the year. Back into Wildcat, our tracks from before were barely visible, and there weren't any others. Hard to believe, but the second lap was better than the first.
I'd planned to quit after that run, but seeing that the other two returned to the Tram I hurried ahead to join them for one last 3 p.m. bucket. By now the gate to the High Baldy hike was closed for the day, so we headed way down the Mid-Cirque Traverse to another line that I won't mention here, but that remained completely untracked, even at 3:15 p.m.! An amazing way to finish the day that Bobby's skiing in the first action scene in today's video:
[skitube2]http://www.firsttracksonline.com/modules/crpVideo/pnmedia/videos/1240795280_2009-04-26_AltaBird.flv[/skitube2]
I hadn't even planned to film today, but that second lap into Alta was just so good that I broke out the camera and started rolling tape. Realize that everything in that movie was filmed after ~ 2 p.m.
I'd also like to point out that, happily, Snowbird's got to be making money right now. Saturday was quite busy. Today was positively packed after, say, noon. Folks were obviously calling their friends to tell them how good it was getting. Many, many customers were skiing on day tickets. It was busy before that, but by 1 p.m. the Tram corral was completely full, even stretching outside to the east end of the building, then wrapping back past the ticket windows. Insane! Good to see from a business perspective, but it really would've been nice to have a second way up the mountain (the only lifts running were the Tram, Mineral Basin Express, Little Cloud, Chickadee and Wilbere, the latter primarily for racer access). It would've made more sense to me to take the lifties from Wilbere and Chickadee and move them to Peruvian and the Tunnel. Were it not for that Tram line we would've had time for a third lap into Alta.
