Day 14: Where'd all these people come from?
With the front not forecast to arrive until noon I stuck to my plan to sample a few runs at The Canyons. I arrived mid-morning, only to find myself in the outer lot at Base Camp. Why? Today was the last day to use the free vouchers from the Warren Miller movie, and everyone dug them out of the drawer to use them. Today.
No matter, I'd check things out. After the schlep across the parking lot, up the cabriolet, through the village and up the gondola, I finally arrived at Red Pine...only to see a massive liftline at Saddleback Express, about four times the size of the queue they'd set up.
It was actually better than it looked, and in 8 minutes I was on the lift.
It's remarkable how much less snow there is here, even when compared with PCMR just three miles down the same ridgeline. They're getting this latest series of storms just in time.
I buzzed down Kokopelli and Echo to get to the Sun Peak Express, figuring that there would be fewer people over there. I was wrong. I had plenty of time to see that they were blowing snow on Flume to provide a route back to the base.
To add insult to injury the lift broke down for about 15 minutes as I was about 3 chairs from boarding. :roll: In that time the liftline grew exponentially, so once back on top I worked my way back to Saddleback Express again. I noticed that they were also blowing snow on Sidewinder, the main route to Red Pine from the top of Tombstone.
This time I looped left off the chair to hit Snow Dancer, which had a few chocolate chips showing on the first left turn.
After a few more runs on Snow Dancer I decided that I'd had enough of dealing with the crowd and would beat the storm over Parley's, and boarded the gondola to head back down.
The front arrived just as I was pulling out of the parking lot. By the time I hit I-80 the snow was sticking to the road. By the time I made Parley's Summit visibility had dropped to at most 100 feet, and it was a white-knuckle descent all the way to the Salt Lake Valley. The Eastbound side was a parking lot from Mountain Dell all the way to the summit.
Bring it on! \
/
With the front not forecast to arrive until noon I stuck to my plan to sample a few runs at The Canyons. I arrived mid-morning, only to find myself in the outer lot at Base Camp. Why? Today was the last day to use the free vouchers from the Warren Miller movie, and everyone dug them out of the drawer to use them. Today.
No matter, I'd check things out. After the schlep across the parking lot, up the cabriolet, through the village and up the gondola, I finally arrived at Red Pine...only to see a massive liftline at Saddleback Express, about four times the size of the queue they'd set up.
It was actually better than it looked, and in 8 minutes I was on the lift.
It's remarkable how much less snow there is here, even when compared with PCMR just three miles down the same ridgeline. They're getting this latest series of storms just in time.
I buzzed down Kokopelli and Echo to get to the Sun Peak Express, figuring that there would be fewer people over there. I was wrong. I had plenty of time to see that they were blowing snow on Flume to provide a route back to the base.
To add insult to injury the lift broke down for about 15 minutes as I was about 3 chairs from boarding. :roll: In that time the liftline grew exponentially, so once back on top I worked my way back to Saddleback Express again. I noticed that they were also blowing snow on Sidewinder, the main route to Red Pine from the top of Tombstone.
This time I looped left off the chair to hit Snow Dancer, which had a few chocolate chips showing on the first left turn.
After a few more runs on Snow Dancer I decided that I'd had enough of dealing with the crowd and would beat the storm over Parley's, and boarded the gondola to head back down.
The front arrived just as I was pulling out of the parking lot. By the time I hit I-80 the snow was sticking to the road. By the time I made Parley's Summit visibility had dropped to at most 100 feet, and it was a white-knuckle descent all the way to the Salt Lake Valley. The Eastbound side was a parking lot from Mountain Dell all the way to the summit.
Bring it on! \
/