With two storms forecast to roll through in close succession this weekend, I'd planned to film video at Solitude today. I also wanted to reacquaint myself with a hill that, except for a quick pass through on the Interconnect Tour last year, I haven't skied since one day on a visit to Utah just prior to the 2002 Olympics. I quickly rounded up a couple of folks to ski in front of the camera on what was hoped to be a powder day today.
Standing at the Powderhorn lift entrance at 9am, waiting for new friends Chris and Chelsea to arrive at the hill, a line from X's Johnny Hit and Run Pauline played repeatedly in my head: "At last Pauline wouldn't cooperate." Fresh snowfall was my "Pauline" today. Nothing of substance fell overnight as I'd anticipated, and Chris, Chelsea and I were greeted by not-really-dust on crust. Yesterday's 9" had consolidated into a few inches of whipped cream atop a previously softened base that had now refrozen into a sometimes crusty, sometimes firm footing beneath the new snow. Riding Powderhorn, looking down on runs like Cirque where that new snow was draped over refrozen ruts and chopped up snow, we were more than a bit disappointed at the day's prospects.
We didn't hold high hopes for the snow conditions but went forth with filming plans anyway. You know what happens when you have low expectations? You're sometimes pleasantly surprised. While the frontside groomers were firm and scratchy (especially Inspiration -- it seemed to depend on when last night the groomers hit them, before or after the snow set up) we found delightful almost-powder skiing on lap after lap through Black Forest. For April 9, this stuff was pretty darned good. The trick for today was to pick places that hadn't been chopped up by skiers during this week's warm weather, allowing a smooth base underneath the few inches of new wet snow. This top layer was the perfect consistency on top of that base. Anything lighter would have provided insufficient resistance. Phatties, too, ruled the day as they seldom punched through that crusty layer beneath to grab you.
Solitude lived up to its moniker today -- the place was deserted. At 2pm, one of my favorite lines in Honeycomb Canyon had only one -- count 'em, one -- track in it. I think that I spotted only one other guy in Black Forest all day. We traversed across the top of Buckeye Junior, where some lines remained completely untouched. "Don't let it tempt you," Chris warned as I pointed out what looked like nearly perfect skiing below our traverse. We marched on along a steadily rising traverse line -- glide here, sidestep up there, then rinse and repeat. "Follow me...trust me," Chris quietly urged.
As Chris rode Powderhorn for another attack on Milk Run, an experience that Chelsea and I quite frankly were reluctant to repeat, we rode the Sunnyside and Summit chairs in tandem to ski High Cathedral around 10 am or so. This was another delightful highlight of the day, and looking back up at High Cathedral from our seats aboard the Summit chair at 2pm mine was still the only track on my chosen line. Most of the lines back in Black Forest were ours! On our one trip way, way out on the Honeycomb Traverse at around noon, probably our best run of the day, Chris was actually breaking trail. We were the first ones to head out to the Boundary Chutes in the past two days!
The only bummer about Solitude remains a quirk of its topography, and therefore is just about impossible to change: it takes a minimum of three lift rides to return to the goods in Honeycomb Canyon. Each run was thus a powder ride, followed by a groomer on the front side to return. We short-cutted that a bit towards the end of the day by exiting via the gate atop the Powderhorn chair, cutting our lift rides down to two for each run back there. Gravity traversing out only a hundred yards or so, we didn't even have to search at 3pm to find entire expanses of steep, forested terrain without a single track. And this without a bit of hiking at all!
I really have to thank Chris for sharing some of Solitude's secrets with me today. "It's a shame that I didn't get to ski with you earlier this year," Chris lamented as he pointed out run after run of his favorite lines on a powder day. It's doubtful that he'll get to show me next season, either. Chris is a member of the U.S. skeleton team. Unfortunately for me, he'll be gliding on his stomach at obscene speeds down icy tracks across Europe on the World Cup for much of next winter, leading up to his participation in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino.
At 3 pm a wall of moderate snowfall moved in, providing hope for freshies tomorrow. Looking at the weather and radar, however, this system doesn't seem to have a whole lot of moisture to work with, either. This storm looks to have fizzled, too, as the NWS is only calling for a trace to an inch in the mountains tonight. Maybe I'll go two-for-two on pleasant surprises this weekend. The Wasatch has a funny way of doing that.
We congregated in the parking lot at 3:30 pm, over 19,000 vertical feet after starting our day. "Ya know, I had a blast today!" Smiles and acknowledgements were exchanged all around. It really was good. But again, to quote a popular local phrase, in the Wasatch, "It's all good!" If you want to ski Solitude's remarkable base this season, you still have one week to get up there before the lifts stop spinning for a summer that right now seems a long, long way off yet.
I have yet to run through the raw tape to see what we got, but hopefully there's enough for a short video production over the coming months. That's tough to do, though, over only one day with a crew of only three. That means one person behind the camera and two in front of it for any given segment. If we didn't get enough roll today, there's a start for our next Utah video production. J.Spin has a Kicking Horse video production in the works in the meantime if we didn't shoot enough film today. I took very few stills today as the video camera was rolling, but here's one of Chris and Chelsea way out on the Honeycomb Traverse.
Standing at the Powderhorn lift entrance at 9am, waiting for new friends Chris and Chelsea to arrive at the hill, a line from X's Johnny Hit and Run Pauline played repeatedly in my head: "At last Pauline wouldn't cooperate." Fresh snowfall was my "Pauline" today. Nothing of substance fell overnight as I'd anticipated, and Chris, Chelsea and I were greeted by not-really-dust on crust. Yesterday's 9" had consolidated into a few inches of whipped cream atop a previously softened base that had now refrozen into a sometimes crusty, sometimes firm footing beneath the new snow. Riding Powderhorn, looking down on runs like Cirque where that new snow was draped over refrozen ruts and chopped up snow, we were more than a bit disappointed at the day's prospects.
We didn't hold high hopes for the snow conditions but went forth with filming plans anyway. You know what happens when you have low expectations? You're sometimes pleasantly surprised. While the frontside groomers were firm and scratchy (especially Inspiration -- it seemed to depend on when last night the groomers hit them, before or after the snow set up) we found delightful almost-powder skiing on lap after lap through Black Forest. For April 9, this stuff was pretty darned good. The trick for today was to pick places that hadn't been chopped up by skiers during this week's warm weather, allowing a smooth base underneath the few inches of new wet snow. This top layer was the perfect consistency on top of that base. Anything lighter would have provided insufficient resistance. Phatties, too, ruled the day as they seldom punched through that crusty layer beneath to grab you.
Solitude lived up to its moniker today -- the place was deserted. At 2pm, one of my favorite lines in Honeycomb Canyon had only one -- count 'em, one -- track in it. I think that I spotted only one other guy in Black Forest all day. We traversed across the top of Buckeye Junior, where some lines remained completely untouched. "Don't let it tempt you," Chris warned as I pointed out what looked like nearly perfect skiing below our traverse. We marched on along a steadily rising traverse line -- glide here, sidestep up there, then rinse and repeat. "Follow me...trust me," Chris quietly urged.
As Chris rode Powderhorn for another attack on Milk Run, an experience that Chelsea and I quite frankly were reluctant to repeat, we rode the Sunnyside and Summit chairs in tandem to ski High Cathedral around 10 am or so. This was another delightful highlight of the day, and looking back up at High Cathedral from our seats aboard the Summit chair at 2pm mine was still the only track on my chosen line. Most of the lines back in Black Forest were ours! On our one trip way, way out on the Honeycomb Traverse at around noon, probably our best run of the day, Chris was actually breaking trail. We were the first ones to head out to the Boundary Chutes in the past two days!
The only bummer about Solitude remains a quirk of its topography, and therefore is just about impossible to change: it takes a minimum of three lift rides to return to the goods in Honeycomb Canyon. Each run was thus a powder ride, followed by a groomer on the front side to return. We short-cutted that a bit towards the end of the day by exiting via the gate atop the Powderhorn chair, cutting our lift rides down to two for each run back there. Gravity traversing out only a hundred yards or so, we didn't even have to search at 3pm to find entire expanses of steep, forested terrain without a single track. And this without a bit of hiking at all!
I really have to thank Chris for sharing some of Solitude's secrets with me today. "It's a shame that I didn't get to ski with you earlier this year," Chris lamented as he pointed out run after run of his favorite lines on a powder day. It's doubtful that he'll get to show me next season, either. Chris is a member of the U.S. skeleton team. Unfortunately for me, he'll be gliding on his stomach at obscene speeds down icy tracks across Europe on the World Cup for much of next winter, leading up to his participation in the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino.
At 3 pm a wall of moderate snowfall moved in, providing hope for freshies tomorrow. Looking at the weather and radar, however, this system doesn't seem to have a whole lot of moisture to work with, either. This storm looks to have fizzled, too, as the NWS is only calling for a trace to an inch in the mountains tonight. Maybe I'll go two-for-two on pleasant surprises this weekend. The Wasatch has a funny way of doing that.
We congregated in the parking lot at 3:30 pm, over 19,000 vertical feet after starting our day. "Ya know, I had a blast today!" Smiles and acknowledgements were exchanged all around. It really was good. But again, to quote a popular local phrase, in the Wasatch, "It's all good!" If you want to ski Solitude's remarkable base this season, you still have one week to get up there before the lifts stop spinning for a summer that right now seems a long, long way off yet.
I have yet to run through the raw tape to see what we got, but hopefully there's enough for a short video production over the coming months. That's tough to do, though, over only one day with a crew of only three. That means one person behind the camera and two in front of it for any given segment. If we didn't get enough roll today, there's a start for our next Utah video production. J.Spin has a Kicking Horse video production in the works in the meantime if we didn't shoot enough film today. I took very few stills today as the video camera was rolling, but here's one of Chris and Chelsea way out on the Honeycomb Traverse.
