Day 35: Whisper who?
Whisper Ridge Cat Skiing is a brand new operator in Utah. How new? Today, we were their second group ever. They took delivery of their first snowcat last Friday. They got their Conditional Use Permit the day before that.
Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I was up at 5 a.m. this morning to drive to their offices in Eden, near the bottom of the Powder Mountain access road, to research an upcoming FTO feature article. One by one the day's guests arrived for a 7 a.m. light breakfast and waiver signing, and I was immediately struck not only by how warmly everyone was welcomed, but how the staff went out of their way to introduce the guests to one another. That certainly helped break the ice and the group quickly gelled as a result.
Our convoy of vehicles headed over the North Ogden Divide and up Sardine Canyon for the one-hour drive to the cat. Right now that's a small weakness of this operation, but beginning next season the owners expect to operate out of a cabin at the pick-up site, which is just east of Paradise and Avon, Utah, in the southern Cache Valley. We loaded the cat at 9:10 a.m. and headed up Paradise Dry Canyon. From the pick-up point, it's another 45-60 minutes in the cat to the skiing that we did today between 6,900 and 7,900 feet.
The cat pick-up at the mouth of Paradise Dry Canyon.
Beacon check.
Inside the cat. L to R: Mandy, Shawn, Terry, guide Kevin Sheridan, mountain ops manager Tommy Keating, guide Gina Thomason, co-owner Doug Scoville.
Whisper Ridge is permitted to operate on a ridiculous 30,000 acres of land. Think about that for a moment -- 30,000 acres. That's bigger than all 14 of Utah's lift-served ski resorts combined. Now, admittedly a chunk of that isn't truly skiable, and they've so far only scratched the surface of what they can provide, but that's a whole lot of land no matter how you slice it.
Guide Kevin Sheridan, and Shawn from the Sports Den in Salt Lake City.
Guide Kevin Sheridan.
Co-owner Doug Scoville, and guest Joy in the background.
Back at the cat.
Slaying the untracked.
Shawn from Sports Den.
Terry
The requisite group photo.
Brandi
Terry forgot that you're supposed to keep the p-tex side down.
Brandi
Joe
Starting another run.
Guide Gina Thomason and mountain ops director Tommy Keating.
We skied all the way to 5 p.m. and got in 11 runs (7 on POF Ridge, and 4 more on an adjacent as-yet-unnamed ridge) for around 9,000 total vertical feet, all of it in absolute untracked goodness. It was basically dark out by the time we climbed out of the cat and returned to our vehicles. It was so good, in fact, that the group opted to eat lunch in the cat rather than stop and rest. We all arrived this morning as strangers, and left tonight as friends.
These folks are working hard to make this all happen. Majority owner Dan Lockwood, also our cat driver,was still up at 3 a.m. fixing a broken hydraulic hose and one of the tracks on the cat, but was still out there at 7 a.m. getting things ready before driving all day. And despite all of that he was one of the most personable guys I've had the pleasure to meet. I lost count of the number of times we were asked if we wanted anything to eat or drink. After three years of planning and scouting their terrain, they're thrilled just to have customers skiing their untracked snow with perma-grins frozen on their faces.
Whisper Ridge is taking delivery of a second cat next week, one with a winch that will enable them to build a cat road all the way to the ridge at 8,215 feet for 1,250 vertical-foot runs on the same terrain that they're already skiing. A third cat will arrive the week thereafter.
A feature article will follow here at FTO within the next week or two, so stay tuned. In the meantime, Whisper Ridge is definitely worth checking out!
Whisper Ridge Cat Skiing is a brand new operator in Utah. How new? Today, we were their second group ever. They took delivery of their first snowcat last Friday. They got their Conditional Use Permit the day before that.
Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I was up at 5 a.m. this morning to drive to their offices in Eden, near the bottom of the Powder Mountain access road, to research an upcoming FTO feature article. One by one the day's guests arrived for a 7 a.m. light breakfast and waiver signing, and I was immediately struck not only by how warmly everyone was welcomed, but how the staff went out of their way to introduce the guests to one another. That certainly helped break the ice and the group quickly gelled as a result.
Our convoy of vehicles headed over the North Ogden Divide and up Sardine Canyon for the one-hour drive to the cat. Right now that's a small weakness of this operation, but beginning next season the owners expect to operate out of a cabin at the pick-up site, which is just east of Paradise and Avon, Utah, in the southern Cache Valley. We loaded the cat at 9:10 a.m. and headed up Paradise Dry Canyon. From the pick-up point, it's another 45-60 minutes in the cat to the skiing that we did today between 6,900 and 7,900 feet.
The cat pick-up at the mouth of Paradise Dry Canyon.
Beacon check.
Inside the cat. L to R: Mandy, Shawn, Terry, guide Kevin Sheridan, mountain ops manager Tommy Keating, guide Gina Thomason, co-owner Doug Scoville.
Whisper Ridge is permitted to operate on a ridiculous 30,000 acres of land. Think about that for a moment -- 30,000 acres. That's bigger than all 14 of Utah's lift-served ski resorts combined. Now, admittedly a chunk of that isn't truly skiable, and they've so far only scratched the surface of what they can provide, but that's a whole lot of land no matter how you slice it.
Guide Kevin Sheridan, and Shawn from the Sports Den in Salt Lake City.
Guide Kevin Sheridan.
Co-owner Doug Scoville, and guest Joy in the background.
Back at the cat.
Slaying the untracked.
Shawn from Sports Den.
Terry
The requisite group photo.
Brandi
Terry forgot that you're supposed to keep the p-tex side down.
Brandi
Joe
Starting another run.
Guide Gina Thomason and mountain ops director Tommy Keating.
We skied all the way to 5 p.m. and got in 11 runs (7 on POF Ridge, and 4 more on an adjacent as-yet-unnamed ridge) for around 9,000 total vertical feet, all of it in absolute untracked goodness. It was basically dark out by the time we climbed out of the cat and returned to our vehicles. It was so good, in fact, that the group opted to eat lunch in the cat rather than stop and rest. We all arrived this morning as strangers, and left tonight as friends.
These folks are working hard to make this all happen. Majority owner Dan Lockwood, also our cat driver,was still up at 3 a.m. fixing a broken hydraulic hose and one of the tracks on the cat, but was still out there at 7 a.m. getting things ready before driving all day. And despite all of that he was one of the most personable guys I've had the pleasure to meet. I lost count of the number of times we were asked if we wanted anything to eat or drink. After three years of planning and scouting their terrain, they're thrilled just to have customers skiing their untracked snow with perma-grins frozen on their faces.
Whisper Ridge is taking delivery of a second cat next week, one with a winch that will enable them to build a cat road all the way to the ridge at 8,215 feet for 1,250 vertical-foot runs on the same terrain that they're already skiing. A third cat will arrive the week thereafter.
A feature article will follow here at FTO within the next week or two, so stay tuned. In the meantime, Whisper Ridge is definitely worth checking out!
