Sam, Sam’s dad, Gold, Gold’s dad, Jeff, and I skied Solitude on Sunday. Snowbird was reporting 11″ of new snow by 8pm last night. I went to sleep expecting today to be one of the best pow days of the season. Unfortunately, it stopped snowing shortly after 8pm. To make things worse, the winds picked up and managed to scrape the 11″ of new snow away to some undisclosed location beyond the boundaries of Solitude Resort.
Sam was 20 minutes late and forgot his jacket and had to drive back down to his car at the mouth of Big Cottonwood, but Al and I managed to get to the lift before first chair. We started the day with a few laps on Powderhorn II before taking Milk Run down to Summit Lift. The snow was wind blown on top and crusty underneath. Plus, it was foggy.
On our second ride up Summit, we reached the top of the lift as the patrol dropped the rope to the short-traverse side of Honeycomb. We traversed out aways and dropped into some legitimate powder through the Black Forest. Great run top-to-bottom.
Byron, Stacey, and Jana had a three hour layover at Salt Lake International. I left Solitude at 11am and met them for lunch at Red Iguana. Lunch was great.
After lunch, I dropped them off at the airport and made my way back to Solitude. I got back on the hill at 1:45pm and rode hard until closing. Sam, Gold, and I filmed a bunch of quick clips that I put into a short video, my 6th ski edit of the year. Check out the video I threw together:
Oh and I figured out my car could have driven up Mt Rainier today.
- Jeremy Ranch to Parley’s Summit = 800 ft
- Sandy to Solitude (morning drive) = 3500 ft
- Sandy to Solitude (Sam getting his jacket) = 3500 ft
- Sandy to Solitude (after-lunch drive) = 3500 ft
- SLC to Parley’s Summit = 2600 ft
- Jeremy Ranch to Hilltop Dr. = 500 ft
- Total: 14,400 vertical feet (Mt Rainier = 14,410 ft)






