Friend Eric and his wife Sara were in town from Austin, Texas, and I joined them on Saturday for a day at Snowbird, my first day there this season.
Conditions for the day were about 3 inches of fluff atop varying degrees of crustiness from our prolonged dry spell, and snow fell at varying intensities throughout the day. (Since then, however, much more snow has moved into the Wasatch.) We opened with a tram ride, and Sara became disoriented in the flat light and snowmaking operations on Regulator Johnson as Eric and I played along the ropeline to skier's right. Trees were definitely the order of the day, providing definition for visibility, so we headed over to Gad 2 where Eric and I would ski steep tree lines as Sara circumnavigated her way back to the chair via groomed blues. We yo-yo'd the chair until noon, when Sara made her way down to the Cliff Spa to enjoy an early Christmas present from Eric.
That allowed us to experiment a bit further, heading to the trees separating Wilbere Bowl from the Gad Chutes. Getting there along the Mid-Cirque Traverse was tricky, thanks both to flat light and the bumps and rocks along the exposed traverse. It was worth the effort, though, for our chosen line down to and through Restaurant Row yielded some of the best turns of the day on the north-northwest facing terrain. We headed back up a combo of Gadzoom and Little Cloud to repeat, now knowing the cleaner route through the traverse, and this time dropping the other side of the ridge into the middle Cirque, where visibility was slightly better, and still negotiable even without the trees for support. We returned to the tram plaza via the trees to skier's right of Dalton's and then lower Dalton's itself, and I joined Eric for a burger before heading home for the rest of the afternoon.
Sorry, no pictures! The weather just wasn't terribly cooperative for photos.
Conditions for the day were about 3 inches of fluff atop varying degrees of crustiness from our prolonged dry spell, and snow fell at varying intensities throughout the day. (Since then, however, much more snow has moved into the Wasatch.) We opened with a tram ride, and Sara became disoriented in the flat light and snowmaking operations on Regulator Johnson as Eric and I played along the ropeline to skier's right. Trees were definitely the order of the day, providing definition for visibility, so we headed over to Gad 2 where Eric and I would ski steep tree lines as Sara circumnavigated her way back to the chair via groomed blues. We yo-yo'd the chair until noon, when Sara made her way down to the Cliff Spa to enjoy an early Christmas present from Eric.
That allowed us to experiment a bit further, heading to the trees separating Wilbere Bowl from the Gad Chutes. Getting there along the Mid-Cirque Traverse was tricky, thanks both to flat light and the bumps and rocks along the exposed traverse. It was worth the effort, though, for our chosen line down to and through Restaurant Row yielded some of the best turns of the day on the north-northwest facing terrain. We headed back up a combo of Gadzoom and Little Cloud to repeat, now knowing the cleaner route through the traverse, and this time dropping the other side of the ridge into the middle Cirque, where visibility was slightly better, and still negotiable even without the trees for support. We returned to the tram plaza via the trees to skier's right of Dalton's and then lower Dalton's itself, and I joined Eric for a burger before heading home for the rest of the afternoon.
Sorry, no pictures! The weather just wasn't terribly cooperative for photos.
