definitely spring skiing this time

The weekend rolled around and spring was definitely in the air.  H skied solo on Saturday, the last day for the ski bus (which is so stupid - I mean, why not run it Sunday too?).  When he came back, he was all, "You should have gone."  To which I pointed out, I'm going tomorrow [Sunday] ... and who's smart?  Me, because Sunday was even nicer - sunnier, warmer, less windy - than Saturday.

Words to live by, compliments of the

Goldminer's Daughter's door

Because we didn't have to catch an early bus, Sunday felt decadent: I slept in until after 6:30!  As we drove up to Alta, there wasn't much traffic on the road.  We pulled into Wildcat base and were directed to a very nice parking spot by the parking lot guys.  We changed our boots in the locker room (no word yet on whether we'll be able to sublet the locker again next year) and slathered on more sunscreen.

Yet another Supreme chair selfie

As I had done on Thursday, and H had done on Saturday, we started on the Sugarloaf chair, following the sun around as it warmed and softened the snow.  Extrovert got really good and the little Razorback pitch was fantastic, although you can only make about three turns before it's over.  A lot of terrain was closed (like Saturday, unlike Thursday): Devil's Castle, the Backside, Catherine's Area, Supreme Bowl, East Castle.

#nofilter on that sky

We moved to the Supreme chair next, doing laps, seeking the sun.  It never got busy enough that we had to wait in line and we almost always had the chairs to ourselves.  

Dang good parking spot

When we moved over to the front side, the wiggle in the Ballroom was deep and fast, and we could see people getting launched - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not - from the turns.  I was not at all happy with the top half of the first run down Collins: it was frozen hard and not much fun.  It was much better below the angle station.  We took a ride on Wildcat next; since it's such a slow chair, we figured that would just give more time for the sun to soften things up.  Back to the Collins chair for another but it hadn't softened up much in my opinion and I called it a day.  H did one more run and said that it really was softer that time.  I remained skeptical.

Those wires are tiny battery-powered lights

Since it was the next-to-last ski weekend, and since it was so gorgeous, we had brought a couple of beers for the tailgate.  The Wildcat base parking lot was about 75% full and people were still coming in.  This time of year, most people prefer to come later when it's warmer, softer and the party has started.  As always, it both seems like the ski season has taken forever and gone so fast.  On beautiful days like this one, you wish it could last longer. 

playing hooky 2

The last time I played hooky to go skiing, it was pretty cold and definitely snowing the whole time.  Not what I had had in mind.  This time, when I needed to get a day in for not skiing on the weekend when it was dumping snow, it was much more what I wanted.  Bright sun, bluebird skies, no wind and hardly any people.

Supreme chair selfie

Going up midweek is just so decadent-feeling, compared to having to get up at 5:30 a.m. to catch a 6:30 a.m. bus.  This time, I slept in until the sun was up, had breakfast, took Milton on a halfway decent walk, and then hopped in the car to go up to Alta.  The drive took me fifteen minutes and I still got up there fifteen minutes before the lifts opened.  And got a dang good parking spot too.

Supreme chair

The thing to do this time of year - when the snow freezes up overnight from being slushy the afternoon before - is start off on the Sugarloaf chair, which gets the most sun and thus softens up the fastest.   When conditions start getting sticky, move to Supreme and then, in the early afternoon, head to the front side.  That's exactly what I did.  Everything was open: there were a good number of folks schlepping up the East Castle traverse; and there was a line of skiers hiking up Baldy.

Partial view of Devil's Castle

Since it wasn't crowded (no little kids and most people seemed to be 60+), I skied right onto the lifts every run, meaning that I made a lot of runs even though I'm pretty slow.  I even ventured into Catherine's Area but should have waited just a little longer before doing so: it was softening but still stiff in spots, making it difficult for me to push through.

Catherine's Area selfie

By 1 p.m., when I got to the front side, the main groomers were nice and soft.  I did make the mistake of going into Sunspot.  It looked okay from the chair but once I got in there, it was still hard and scraped off and I got out and over to Strawberry as soon as I could.  Despite that one sketchy run, it was a fantastic day.  I skied until my legs were tired and didn't get sunburned - so much better than going to work!

more skiing and homebodying

 Despite my still having three days to ski before the season ends, I again opted out of skiing today (see previous post re being over winter conditions).  H went up to Alta, noting that the bus was not very crowded and the road much less dicey than Saturday.  It was still cold, but less windy, and snowed off and on all day, although never amounting to much.  There seemed to be more people than the day before but patrol did a great job opening more terrain and spreading those people out.  He had another terrific day, finding thigh-deep stashes on the Backside and down Chartreuse Nose.  

She deep

Milton and I did our Dimple Dell loop, stopping in to say hey to the new bison.  It took us a while because there were a LOT of things to sniff as it had been several weeks since we did the whole loop.  Back at home, while the dog pouted that it wasn't sunny and warm enough to lay out in the driveway (mostly cloudy, high 30s and occasional flurries), I meal-prepped black beans in the InstantPot, made a coffee cake and the best vegan chili, vacuumed and finished a library book.  The sun finally came out around 5 p.m. but by that time, Milton was content to snuggle up on the bed with H, watching videos while the chili simmered.  Not the most scintillating weekend (nor the most productive, as I was hoping it would have been warm enough to do some weeding (dang weeds)), but sometimes that's what you get.  We're all together, healthy and happy, and that's enough.

Also: Alta is at 611 inches on the season!

apparently winter ain't over yet

 Time is running out on the 2023/2024 ski season.  Not that you'd know it from the weather.  Although it hit 70 in SLC on Wednesday - and it was glorious - a cold front started pushing in onThursday (windy), arrived Friday (plummeting temperatures) and the system settled into the Cottonwood Canyons overnight into Saturday.  We got a dusting of snow by Saturday morning but by 3 p.m. Saturday, Alta had gotten 18" in the last 24 hours and, to look at the mountain webcams, it wasn't letting up anytime soon.  It was also cold: 20F at the base and 9F at the top.

I'm over it with winter conditions.  Call me a wimp, a fair weather skier, but I'm tired of being wet and cold and I want a goggle tan.  So I didn't go.  The valley weather was better than forecasted (the forecasts have not been that accurate all winter, IMHO), but in the 30s and mostly cloudy, with off and on flurries.  Milton and I did a good walk in the morning, including him getting a game of off-leash chase with a neighborhood dog.  And then I was productive: pumpkin-cranberry-walnut muffins, chocolate chip cookies, baked tofu, peach preserves and chickpea/walnut taco "meat" for dinner, plus dealing with a ridiculous amount of laundry.

H of course went skiing, up and at 'em and on the 6:30 bus.  It wasn't terribly crowded so he got a seat, reporting that it was snowing hard and the upper canyon road was sketchy after Snowbird.  After a slightly delayed opening, he had a great day (morning) of skiing, starting off Collins in Fred's Trees and then just skiing off the High Traverse for pretty much the whole time.  There wasn't much else open because patrol hadn't cleared slides yet, but the conditions were deep and soft and lots of fun.  He did try a run over at Sugarloaf but it was windier there and colder, so he went back to Collins, did a ten minute warm-up in the lodge for his hands and feet, and then kept skiing.  

By mid-morning they were posting that the canyon road would close for avalanche mitigation at 1:30.  He was sad to have to leave early but better that then potentially getting stuck up the canyon into the evening.  The snow was really stacking up on the upper road too, making the bus ride down rather more exciting than he would have liked.  The bus slid off the road a couple of times, but with its chains on managed to back up each time and get back on the road.  When they got to the left turn into Snowbird center, the bus driver didn't even attempt to go in and when they got down to the turn at Tanners Flat, the bus actually fishtailed.  Below that the snow tapered off, however, and the bottom bit was just wet.  H said that was the gnarliest bus ride in all our years of riding the ski bus - I think I'm glad I missed it.

The stormy weather did give H an impressive ice-mustache, occasioning several compliments, including  "You can grow a grizzly bear mustache and I can only grow a squirrel!"

an overcast weekend in the desert is better than no weekend in the desert

 We spent the last weekend of March down in Moab and while it wasn't the blue skies and balmy T I had hoped for, it was quite a lot better than what northern Utah got, which was rain and slush.  Down in the southeast corner of the state, it was mostly overcast but warm-ish (up to mid-60s occasionally) and with a few sprinkles of rain interspersed here and there.  It was also the final weekend of the 2024 Easter Jeep Safari and there was a definite uptick in tourists.

It's a little blurry (nighttime shot)

but this tree was spectacular

We did a little socializing, hanging out with our neighbor before she left for her Alaskan fishing season, and her roommate, before she relocated to Oregon for a new job.  We also went to Woody's with a friend - he went to high school in Moab and lives/works in town so going anywhere with him is like going out with a rockstar since everyone knows him; and we learned that our favorite bartender has left the Hoodoo for a different restaurant.  We'll track her down but we'll go back to the Hoodoo for its $2 PBRs.

These cacti turn purple in the winter,

to absorb more sunlight, so now that

they're green again, spring must be here

We also got out on the trails a couple of times.  Friday, H wanted to do a 10K trail run: we went to Moab Brand Trails so while he and Milton ran that loop, I hiked a shorter loop and finished up at the end with them.  The temperatures were perfect and the trails fairly empty.  On Saturday, H's knees were a little sore so we opted for just 3.5 miles.  I'm not sure the trail we picked - Moab Rim - was the best choice for knees since it's so steep, up and down, but it got us moving.  There was a Jeep Safari run there that morning so it was closed to other motorized traffic.  We saw a number of hikers, trail runners and dogs though.

First wildflower of the season

Sunday we just did a town walk before packing up and heading north.  It was one of our better spring drives, to be honest: the snow that was supposed to hit Soldier's Summit never materialized, so the road was clear and dry, and since it was Easter Sunday, there was hardly any traffic.  

i take back everything i said about "spring skiing"

I paid the piper for my solo ski day on Thursday by going in to work Saturday morning.  (I took Milton with me but probably shouldn't have, as there's something about my office building that stresses him out in a way that doesn't happen when H takes him to work.)  I did this because the Wasatch mountains were forecast to have some definite weather for the weekend and beyond, and I just don't love storm skiing like I used to.  In the valley, it was warm and windy with scattered showers until late afternoon when the front moved in.  Then we had rain and snain and snow cycling through over and over, with occasional three minute breaks of sunshine, from Saturday evening through Sunday evening.

H went skiing.

Moody Saturday

It wasn't too cold up at Alta on Saturday but it was windy and dark, with very flat light.  They had snow showers off and on but not too much in the way of accumulation.  But we knew they were going to get some, especially as the thunderstorm moved past us Saturday night and headed on up the canyons.

By Sunday morning, the resorts in the Cottonwood Canyons were reporting 12" overnight.  H didn't dillydally and made sure that he got the 6:30 a.m. ski bus.  They got to Alta about twenty-five minutes late, due to dodging other vehicles that had slid off the road, but that was way better than people who didn't get an early start: H talked to a guy who had driven up and it had taken him two hours from the Cottonwood Heights fire station on Wasatch Boulevard due to heavy traffic and slushy conditions.

Just a few tracks

Speaking of condtions, the snow was fantastic, deep and soft and while it wasn't light enough to be considered blower powder, H did get it puffing over his head in some deep pockets that he found.  Plus it kept snowing all day - "free refills."  And since the canyon road was snarled with vehicles, he didn't have to wait in line much, just doing deep lap after deep lap.  He started on the Sugarloaf chair, enjoying good runs down Chartreuse, and then over at the Supreme lift, doing Challenger, the former gullies, the trees off the cat track, Supreme Bowl, the Three Bears trees and one run into the beginning of Catherine's Area where there's a stand of trees we like.

This is that stand of trees we like.  

Look how deep!

Around 12:50, he hopped on the Sugarloaf lift, intending to go ski off the front side for a while (Fred's Trees were calling his name).  But at the top, Alta ski patrol was closing the EBT for avalanche control and the canyon road was closing 1:30 - 3:30 (also for avalanche control).  So he basically straightlined it back down to Alf's and through Sunnyside, then poled for all he was worth across the rope tow, ran to the locker room, threw his skis and poles in the locker, grabbed his boot bag and ran - still in his ski boots - for the 1:09 ski bus.  He was the last one on before the driver closed the doors, and then they just managed to pack the bus full and get out before they closed the canyon.  It was too bad because the snow was so good, but if he'd stayed and skied and taken a 3:30 or later bus, it was probable that he wouldn't have made it home before 5 p.m.

 

variable

 In my current, "I only want to ski when the sun shines" era, I had been eying the upcoming weekend forecast with trepidation: Saturday 19-30 F with 3-5 inches of snow, windy and possibility of thundersnow; Sunday high of 25 F with 1-3 inches.  That's not what I think of when I think of spring skiing.  So I checked my work schedule and was able to play hooky on Thursday, with the plan to work on Saturday so as not to burn a vacation day.  Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday would have been ideal, with Alta sporting warm temperatures and bluebird skies, but Thursday was what I was able to come up with.  The forecasts were all over the place but they all averaged out to fairly warm, snow showers either early or late but not much accumulation, possibly windy.

You don't have to have parking reservations Monday through Thursday, and since there wasn't supposed to be much snow I opted to drive up instead of taking the bus.  I invited H to join me but he had some work stuff he couldn't get out of.  So I slept in until 7 (!), got up and walked Milton, had avocado toast and coffee for breakfast and rolled on out in my little Subaru around 8:20 a.m.  It took me twenty minutes to get up there and they parked me in the second row, just five cars in.  Decadent!  I got the locker opened on the first try, chatted with some of the regular locals in the locker room and then headed up to ski.

It had just barely been sprinkling/spitting snow when I drove past Snowbird but by the time I was walking to the lift line at Collins, it had graduated to snowing.  Big, fat, wet flakes.  It was warm, which was good but also bad because neither my puffy jacket nor my ski pants are particularly waterproof.  By the time we got to the top of Collins, there was around an inch of new snow coating the frozen hardpack underneath.  I went straight to Supreme, got a chair to myself and it kept snowing harder.  As I neared the top of that lift, it was snowing so hard that you couldn't see the next lift tower.  Now I was anxious about driving home: if only I'd skied earlier in the week, or if only I'd taken the bus.  I decided to do two runs at each lift and then check the parking lot back at Wildcat base to see if the snow was sticking to the road.

Extra large photo so you can see the falling snowflakes

As it turns out, the roads were fine, warm enough that snow didn't stick at all.  And after about forty minutes of snowing hard, it stopped - and the weather just kept changing every ten or fifteen minutes, like it didn't know what to do.  Snow, then no precipitation and flat light, then the sun would come out enough that I was overdressed, then a little graupel squall, then back to dry with flat light, and so on.  The snow was variable as well: the top of Collins was bulletproof, then the middle bit was pretty nice, then coming down through Corkscrew you were skiing on frozen death cookies.

I left a little after 1 p.m., having done plenty of runs as there were so few people that I never had to wait in line.  When there were enough people to merit my going to the singles line, I skied right to the front of the line and filled a chair; otherwise I was able to ski right onto the chairs.  I felt like I was skiing better than last time too: I went at exactly the pace I wanted to and I wasn't anxious about other skiers.  The conditions might not have been what I had hoped for but it was still a really good day.

did someone say spring skiing?

 I had announced that I was going to ski Sunday and not Saturday.  H wasn't sure that was the best idea as Sunday's forecast had a few more clouds in it but I just wanted a break in the string of days where I had to get up at 5:30 a.m.  So off he went on Saturday: up at 5:30 for the 6:30 ski bus and on up to Alta where it was clear and bright blue skies, lovely warm sun, temperatures getting up to the low 40s, softening snow and lots of people.  The lift lines were long and the trails kind of crowded; quite a lot of terrain was closed for avalanche control after the wild and windy week we'd had.

Devil's Castle looms large

Meanwhile, down in the valley, Milton and I had a nice walk up through Dimple Dell, complete with a pause to watch some bison (!) exploring their new suburban pasture (the fence the people put in was massive).  Then, while Milton stayed out in our driveway (on a tie-out) to keep an eye on the neighbors, I cooked: making InstantPot black beans, then black bean soup, chocolate chip cookies and meal-prepping "sausage, egg and cheese" breakfast sandwiches for the freezer.  When H got home from skiing, we all decamped to the still-sunny driveway to enjoy the spring weather.

Pausing to enjoy the scenery

On Sunday, both of us were up at 5:30 for the 6:30 ski bus and on up to Alta.  Despite the forecast (the forecasts seem to have been less accurate this ski season), it was clear and bright blue skies, lovely warm sun, temperatures getting up to the high 30s - but seeming warmer because of the sun, softening snow and lnot nearly as many people.  Whether it was the not-so-nice forecast that kept folks away, or valley golfing or maybe pregaming for St. Patrick's Day, the lift lines were not too long.  It did get busier as the day wore on, but patrol opened Ballroom and the Backside, which took some pressure off some of the more-trafficked trails.  It was quite delighful, just the kind of day I had been hoping for up on the hill.

desert things

 Once the latest round of weather cleared out, we went to Moab for a long weekend.  Part of what we did was sad, because we said goodbye to two neighbors who are moving to Oregon for their next adventures.  We - including Milton! - will miss Natalie and Lauren and wish them very well.

Parking lot look-out

Part of what we did wasn't at all sad, however.  On Saturday, H did an eight (8!) mile trail run as part of his new trail running program.  In hindsight, that was probably a little long for his knees but at the time, he felt great.  We went to Moab Brand trails for the "event."  Since we know it so well, we figured he could do his run and Milton and I could do our regular Circle O loop and we'd all end up finished at the same time.  And that's exactly what we did.  Milt didn't like splitting up the herd at first, so I had to keep him on leash for a while.  It was a gorgeous day, mostly clear and sunny but cool - perfect for a long run.  H did great and that was the longest he's run since he ran cross-country in high school.

The boys in motion

On Sunday, even though H's knees were a little sore, we decided that a short (no more than four miles) hike would be a good idea, just to get things moving again.  We drove out to the upper Navajo Rocks trailhead and went out the jeep trail towards Wipe Out Hill.  The first part is on a smooth rocky shelf that goes along the red cliff walls.  Then it switches to sand but since it had rained Friday night as we were driving into town, the sand was still pretty well packed and easy to walk on.  

Warm enough for shorts, btw

We had intended to do an out-and-back, turning around once we got to two miles.  Just before the two-mile mark, however, we came to a wash.  We knew there was another 4x4 road to the south of us and H thought that if we walked the wash, we could cut across to that other road and not have to retrace our steps.  I love walking in washes.  You don't have to worry about footprints; you usually have it to yourself; and it's often more interesting than just stomping along a dirt road.  We did have to scramble under a couple of gnarled junipers but H was right and we came to the other road before too long.

In the wash

When we got back to the parking lot - which was busy-ish but not packed, with MTBers, trailrunners and hikers; we'd seen one side-by-side and one jeep out on the trail - we chatted with some folks while Milton made friends with their dogs: Summit, an eleven year old yellow lab; and also Hank, a tall, young border collie who kept trying to herd Milt.

504 and counting

 H hasn't had to shovel very much down at the house but that doesn't mean it hasn't been a good snow year: Alta hit 504 inches of snowfall on the year, with just over a month to go in the season.  That's a good snow year!  Here's a graphic comparing 2023-2024 (blue/this year) to 2021-2022 (green/two years ago) - way better, although that season did have a strong finish:

Of course, here's what this year looks like when compared to the ridiculous over-the-top-ness of 2022-2024 (green/last year), the likes of which we'll never see again: