Utah - first week of April 2025

[jimk]

Apr 1-5, 2025 in the Wasatch has been wonderful. Winter came back with 20" new, powdery snow at many resorts on Apr 1, then there was 2-6" more the next two days. It's been one of my favorite stretches this winter, and best of all - low crowds the whole time, even today a Saturday at Snowbird. I'm hoping tomorrow is good too.

Apr 1 at Alta:
Me:

Friends.

Supreme lift line 10 AM.

Apr 2 Snowbird, a real fine day of high quality leftovers from the day before. You can see small parts of Gadzoom and Little Clouds chairs in this pic taken from Gad 2 area.

Friend entering Great Scott.

Random hucker in the Forbidden Zone of Upper Cirque.

Saddle section of Tiger Tail area. I had 2 really great laps through here and very quiet.

Apron of the Rasta Chutes area in Little Cloud Bowl.

Apr 3 Brighton, puking again with small lift lines again.

Good place on storm days!

Great Western area soft and friendly.

Took the 4th off.

Apr 5 Snowbird again.
Me in Silver Fox area near summit.

My friend in same area.

Tracks observed in Pipeline Chute, possibly the first this spring!

Gorgeous blue sky day in Mineral, skied the Bookends in center background shortly after taking this photo.

This one's for @tseeb , good beer I bought in Missoula recently.

 

[Sbooker]

Gorgeous blue sky day in Mineral, skied the Bookends in center background shortly after taking this photo.

Until what time of the day does the snow stay nice in Mineral in spring?

 

[jimk]

Until what time of the day does the snow stay nice in Mineral in spring?

It all depends on air temp. Today I skied it from 11-1230pm and it was great. On a milder April day you gotta get out of there about noon or earlier. Today is was only about 40 degs up there, but with gorgeous sunshine. Primo day.

 

[jimk]

Apr 6, 2025 was a special day for me. After ten years of skiing Snowbird fairly regularly I climbed Baldy from the Snowbird side for the first time ever. Better late than never.

A view of Mt Baldy from Snowbird. Our goal was to climb it and then ski down Main Chute on the backside and into the Alta ski area. Then use the Blackjack traverse to get back to Snowbird. A big, burly lap.

The boot pack involves a hike of maybe 500' vertical at 11,000' and took me about 30 or 40 minutes. I went slow.

Nice 360 degs views at the top. There was a good crowd up there, maybe 40 people. And I gotta be honest, at age 71, I might have been one of the oldest.

Looking back at the Bird as a hiker approaches on the route we took. I think Baldy is actually about 50' higher than the lift served summit of Snowbird.

We first traversed past the entrance to Little Chute. It was narrow and fairly rocky. We passed on that one.

A peek down Main Chute from the top. It was pretty "fat" with good snow conditions and plenty of room to operate.

Looking up, about 50 yards below the drop in.

Main Chute's pretty long, but considering the effort to get there, it's over quick The terrain in the background is the Collins side of Alta.

My friend at right, inside Main Chute.

Near the bottom, in geezer survival mode Sensationally beautiful day!

The second week of April in the Wasatch will be much more Spring-like with day time highs on the mtn in the 50s and 60s Fahrenheit. Can be fun, but limits the window for good snow conditions to only a few hours per day.

 

[Tony Crocker]

We now have conclusive proof than JimK is aging more gracefully than I am.

I can reminisce about the times I was comfortable hiking and skiing Baldy, the first time being in 1990 after driving the night before from SoCal.
3/13/2007 with Ben and Stefan
3/14/2023 with Ben and Stefan
These three times I skied Main Chute hiking from the Alta side.

Only on 3/12/2014 did I hike the shorter distance from the Snowbird side. That one was memorable because it was the only time I skied Little Chute. That was the last time I hiked Baldy, at age 61, ten years younger than JimK is now.

Rereading those reports reminds me how the pace of my Iron Blosam weeks has slowed way down the past few seasons.