Leaderboard

From Saturday to Sundy, we got another 1-2” of snow. I heard that Big Cottonwood Canyon like Solitude and Brighton would be good. But ...since I only have a week or so left in Utah, I kind of wanted to explore Deer Valley more. In the morning, I saw that traffic into BCC was slow, so I headed towards 80 into Deer Valley instead. So happy I did because Playing on Bald Mountain, especially near Mayflower lift was awesome, and The Big Cottonwood Canyon shut down from a major accident. Here is a video of it. It looks wild. I zigzagged around Deer Mountain and somehow I ended up on Lower Bald Mountain. Thought the gondola was cool. It’s so fascinating to see the different types of lifts. This was the view from Jordanelle. I'm pretty sure this is the Jordanelle Reservoir, which is a Utah State Park. After some zigzagging, eventually made it the Upper Bald Mountain. When you head towards the Mayflower Lift, it got really foggy and there were signs about double black only. “Nevertheless, [I] persisted.” My favorite spots were Perservance Bowl and Mayflower Bowl. Since the visibility was low and dizzying, I headed for the trees. And, that folks is where I fell in love with the area between Stein’s Way & Edgar Allen. Literally, there was no one was on Bald Mountain. There were lines at the other lifts - lots of families and the typical DV personalities like Skiier Barbie. There’s one man in this picture but you can see all of the lift chairs are empty. I skied about 20k vert then I took @AtomicSkier recommendation to check out the St Regis lyfe. The funicular was so smooth! The atmosphere was classy and beautiful, as expected from Deer Valley. Some yurts were set up for groups I ordered the Lady Boss and a soup, and soaked up the scenery. Great day. Lots of fun. Wally is fully embodying how I feel right about now.

Snow was glorious today! Just tried to stick to as many ungroomed/bump/tree runs as I could find. Except for Paradise bowl! Always have to take my first warm up run down there. Only a few pics, light kinda flat so bumps not real visible. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Challenge first thing was perfect cord, one of the best snows all year. Razors was slightly firmer but also had excellent grip. Switch was also good but blow over from main meant it was softer and slower. Really good morning to be out would have definitely liked to skip out of my 11 meeting. Saw justo and rose out when I was leaving and I was this close to staying.

went to blue. only pasr i saw there was JLaw. BFG and his crew were there. first run on challenge was $$$, top to bottom. soft cord, flat. I can't remember it being better. by the second run it was clearly deteriorating but still better than what is at opening most of the time. razor's was open and groomed. also very nice, a little firmer than challenge but great with no surprises. it, too, started getting eaten up quickly, not bad tho. switchback was great. i think that's all that we did? upper main st, sidewinder, terrain park (under the double) were all closed for snowmaking. bfg said paradise was great. we didn't run it because it was prob packed with people. took that long run from top through burma at the end. burma was garbage. not as crowded at opening as a normal weekday, but felt crowded since so much terrain was closed. not a bad day overall thanks to perfect conditions on challenge/razors. the boulders on falls were gone. the end

Excellent night sesh conditions this evening! Chalky with minimal slick spots. Excellent night out here. 8 out of 10

@GrilledSteezeSandwichheres a better version of your pic

Happy Monday!

Another solid day of XC skiing with @mbike-ski and @Mixilplix today at James Kennedy State Forest in NY. We ended up getting on the snow just after 11:00. It was a chilly 17 degrees when we pulled in with a light wind and light snow falling pretty much our entire day. Lots of lake effect snow up there this last week dropped ~12" of snow on the ground and provided for some really fantastic xc skiing. We started off doing a nice forest loop right from the start and stayed fairly protected from the wind. After that loop we got out to a snowmobile trail and ended up taking that up to the top of Greek Peak and skiing up part of one of their slopes. to stop for a slope side beer. After that we cruised back down to the snowmobile trail and took that for a bit which ended us right back at the parking lot. Surprisingly, we didn't see anybody else out on the trails while we were there. We ended up with just over 6 miles of skiing and ~600' of vert on some really enjoyable trails. Nice to see real snow on the ground and a big shout out to @mbike-ski for putting this together👌

Utah was calling for an epic powder day. Maybe my snow dance worked? (I have terrible dancing skillz btw) I heard stories about closing Cottonwood Canyon closing and people leaving at 5am. @GSSucks told me so. The earliest I could drop off the dog was at 7am but when I checked traffic - it looked quite congested. I knew the die hard powder chasers were already lining up for first chairs hours in advance of the 14" dump. So, I decided to wait it out. But, I still got stuck in traffic. Lesson 1: Drop the dog off the night before to board or find an alternative sitter on rover. Lesson 2: Don't wait it out. Get there before the canyon closes. For me, time is just a construct. I'm late to almost everything in life. I rarely make firm plans. The clock-in to work an exact time type of job doesn't work for me but I'm not lazy. When my sister asks when I'm returning to Pennsylvania, I get the "how in the world do you not plan these type of things?" So. yeah. I'm late to a lot of things and usually just have rough plan. Oh, and I like to sleep 10+ hours. So, all of that combined ... Lesson 3: For powder days, you don't need friends to ski with. But, find someone to brew the coffee and play the pump up music as an alarm. So. I know I'm going to get flack for all of the eternity on PASR because of being so late to a powder day. I understand. lol. So, when I arrived at Snowbird, I headed to my usual "entry 2" and although I had a parking reservation, I couldn't find anywhere to park. I drove in circles, asked attendants, and they told me - "I'm sorry. I don't know." I was talking to an unnamed PASR guy on the phone at the time. He instructed me to abandon my vehicle & go running to the nearest skill hill because there are in fact no laws on powder days or when drinking claws. He was yelling meeeerder the perrrrder. (Note: do not take legal advice from someone who hangs out in parking lots.) Lesson 4: Just go park at Entry 4 by the fire station. See my epic photo shop skillz below. It's less walking to the lift. You can ski down Chickadee (the kids run) and it spits you out at the tram line. When you end the day, you can take Chips Face to OMG to Cliff Access, and it pops you out right by the lot. Here we go. I arrived at 9:45. Finally got parking at 10:30. Started waiting at 10:45. The wait was annoying but I had an obligation so it worked out anyway. (I mentor a high school student who is applying to summer programs and she has a deadline coming up.) Got on the tram around 12:15 and chatted with two ladies in their 70's, who seemed to bypass the line. They got 8 laps in so far because of the bypass line. They've been passholders since college in the 70's. Turns out they have the Seven Summits pass. You get first tracks starting at 7:45am + Eucalyptus steam room + other benefits. Honestly, it sounds lovely. They were on the wait list for years and they usually allow about 60 people on each year. They said it costs a few thousand dollars. These woman were badass grandmoms. https://www.snowbird.com/seven-summits/ When I got to the top, they recently opened Mineral Basin and you could hear echos of wooots. It was magical. This was heading down somewhere near Lupine Loop on one of my runs. But, when you got to the Mineral Basin and Baldy lift. This is what it looked like. You can hear the powder hoots in the beginning of this clip. So by 1pm, the lines started to die down and I played in Mineral Basin area. You could still find untouched lines. I mean, it was deep. Like, this deep. This was my favorite lines of the day.. you can see the speckles of 2 people on Path to Paradise. You drop in any of the unmarked black runs and were greeted with powder after more powder. Here's a view from the top of Path to Paradise. Eventually went to the Baldy lift because the lines were significantly shorter. The runs off of Baldy kind of remind me of Copper. Just so wiiiiiide open. (also <-- one of my favorite songs) In the pic below, the lines in the top left are Chamonix Bowl and the Chamonix Chutes to it's right. In the pic below, to the right is Alta's Sugarloaf lift. If you took it wide near the Ski Patrol Gully lines, you could still get untracked powder by the end of the day. It was an awesome day. Lots of woot'ing. Lots of heavy breathing and smiles. I don't think my legs would have been able to handle a 9-4pm powder day. It already hurts to walk up and down steps in the best type of way. 10/10 day.

Looks great! I aspire to be one of those badass grandma’s when I am older.

Definitely feeling it this morning.The snow on the log shows how deep it was up there. Looking forward to the next trip!

Really fun time today...Big thanks to @mbike-ski for putting this together... Cold but the snow was fantastic...trees had lots of snow on them...fun sitting trail side drinking beers as people skied by...was a nice change of pace from Blue on a weekend..

Another $$ run on switch complete with lots of woo hoos. No one on it + really fast, grippy snow. Staying there the rest of the night.

There is a poster here who was talking lawsuit against blue for false advertising lol

All 14 year-round residents of this upstanding NEw England village turned out for this minor engineering marvel Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They really don't but some of them are super nice and seem to enjoy their jobs. Saw something interesting yesterday at the Quad. A teenaged looking girl lift attendant came up to the guy directing traffic in line and said she was sent over to that chair specifically to enforce mask wearing. They chatted for a minute and he told her to start just walking around the line and talk to anyone who had their mask down or not on at all.

@skiincy ... @GrilledSteezeSandwich and I were in line at 7:10am on Jan 30 2016 and got to watch the sun rise while waiting for a 9:50am delayed opening, and we weren't even the first tram! The reward was worth it.

No. It's awesome. Look for me in about 2 minutes I'll blow you a kiss [emoji8]

then they use some legit photos that still make me look twice. like this one, with the safety bar up. or this other one (though stock) where only one ski has bindings (and the antitheft device is still on the jacket).

Wow, you sure seem to know a lot about that and exactly where to find it

It’s spelled “GRINDR” in the App Store

They're not selling them anymore. If I was an early bird and not so indecisive, that would have been the prudent course of action. I'll have to figure out some other way to not pay window prices 😥

You guys said it all, great snow, trail, beer and peeps! Thanks for joining!

I'll speak from experience as a former lift attendant. When the line was long, at first I'd suggest people pair up and they wouldn't. I couldn't force them to, so I just stopped caring because I was getting paid the same rate no matter how long the line was.

It’s been grate! Doing first tracks and riding right up to the lift until around 9. Then the lines start forming, by 1030 they’re about 15 minutes but the trails are still empty. We leave around 11. Friday nights still about a 5 minute line, drinking by the fire pits in front of the lodge is good, not hard to grab a spot. Parking in lot 10 with a 100 foot walk to the Stevenson is easy too. We’re really glad we made the switch.

I read an article from 2005 about the seven summits club at Snowbird and back then it was $7500 annually. Would be worth it for the 745am starts, line cutting privileges at the tram and complimentary coffee, cold drinks and snacks. Plus the guaranteed close in likely garage parking is a plus.

I think he cared more about the fact that the green matched throughout the ensemble

Lol I cant remember, 2015 and 2016 I think? I'd have to go thru my tax returns. I worked weekends while also working my current full time job for something to do over the winter and to meet some groovy ski chicks (of course that didnt happen). I also had an interest in skiing but didn't have the slightest clue about how to get started. Working at Eagle Rock got me into skiing and to ultimately meet JFDan so I'm eternally grateful for that.

Anyone impressed by tomorrows snow? It doesnt look like much to get excited about IMO.

And Powder Mountain.

If you show your ticket stub from a Utah Jazz basketball game you get $3.50 off a lift ticket at Brian Head Utah.

Correct. Potential new places I will be skiing this season are Hunter, Whiteface, Park City, Deer Valley, Brighton, Solitude, Snowbasin and Perder Mountain.

You are really getting after it this season!!!

So youre going to Hunter, PC/Canyons & Snowbasin. It seems logical that you would look into some sort of Epic pass.....

I don’t wanna hate on good old Blue, but there wasn’t a cookie to be found either.

I *do* think there should never be a single person on the 6er at peak times. Outside of that, @eaf is just on a different planet.

I’m planning on taking off work next Monday. That ensures it will be sleet at best, but most likely freezing rain. You’re welcome. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sidewinder and main street are closed. Crowds are thinning though and Razors / switch are $$.

Yes, when I worked there it was closed to the public. I'd love to go back just one more time to ski Baldy, which was the very first slope I ever skied. But of course I don't know anyone who lives there so it's impossible.

Grate report..Wally is getting big.

Sorry I think @GSSucks already posted this joke 💁‍♂️

I'm gonna stop at Hunter next Tuesday, 2/2 on my way to Whiteface. Already booked it. Decided against going on a weekend date, maybe will do that in late March or something

There was natural snow all around, but probably not enough for any of it to really be skiable without wrecking your skis. Just a few inches. Adds to the wintry experience though when there’s not exposed dirt everywhere you look.

Their policy is they won't make people sit together who didn't come together. My friend and I mostly rode the quad and 6 pack with no one else all morning and afternoon, despite the long line behind us, because we're afraid of the COVID-19. The season pass lane for the quad wasn't too bad, but for the 6 pack it seemed the general public was getting in too, so it was pointless. I heard the lift attendants talking about that and I complained so hopefully they fixed it.

I'm not going to muddy a Stowe thread with Utah trip reports. I have standards. Kind of.

We had another great day today. This weekend was cold as balls but the sun was shining which was nice. The grooming and the snow really was nice. The conditions were so nice that my wife was enjoying the groomed black runs which is a big step up in challenge, and my kids were wanting to ski bumps almost every run! I think we’ll do a weekend up there every year from now on we had so much fun. Lift tix were pretty cheap, and the restaurant was decent and really cheap for a ski area. Place was 100% open except for the one natural snow run.

Yeah I knew I would hear shit for that but honestly my old eyes are getting so bad that I really can’t see when visibility is bad. No depth perception, may even look into those prescription goggles for days like that.

That gives salty a boner.