2009-2010 Ski Days: 73
- Brighton: 1
- Crystal: 2
- Deer Valley: 1
- Mt Aire: 1
- Powder Mtn: 1
- PCMR: 38
- Snowbird: 4
- Solitude: 19
- The Canyons: 6
- TOTAL: 73
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This weekend marks the closing of Snowbird’s 2009-2010 ski season. It looked as if the season would be finished a couple months ago, but a huge snow month in April provided Snowbird with a 120″ inch base that held up until late June. This isn’t the latest ski day I’ve ever had. I remember skiing Crystal Mountain on July 14th of that crazy ‘98-’99 La Nina year when nearby Mt Baker set a snowfall record with 1,140 inches of snow. That said, there’s something awesome about skiing in late June when it’s 70 degrees on the hill and 90 degrees in the valley.
Left to right: Dillon, Marcus, and AJ. Marcus is muddy from skiing through mud.
I met up with Conrad, Dillon, AJ, Marcus, Jake, and a bunch of other kids for some summer skiing. Regulator Johnson was the only run approved by the patrol, but we spent most of the day skiing Road to Provo despite the warnings of “backcountry conditions.” We found out quickly what that meant, as the main runout to the lift was, for the most part, unskiable. We kept having to take our skis off and hike over to lower snowpatches just to get down. Eventually we figured out the best ways down and had an awesome day lapping Little Cloud, hitting jumps, drinking beers, and getting sunburned.
I think Heber is right behind me, it might be blocked by Conrad peeing though.
We skied until 2pm and bypassed downloading on the tram by skiing an awesome line on the Cirque and following random snowpatches to the base area. We made it about 3/4 of the way down the 3,000 vertical foot run before having to take off our skis and bushwhack the rest of the way. Then we sampled a bunch of Utah breweries at Snowbird’s BrewFest.
I swung by the shop for awhile, watched some baseball and finally got up the energy to go for a bike ride. I wish I could say I really had a strong drive to bike, but mainly I just biked to say I skied and biked in the same day… because you can in Utah.
The trail is really green right now. Makes it tough to see the trail a lot of the time.
I rode The Avenues. Even finding some extra energy to ride past the halfway point to the top. Then I rode down.
One of the best days of the year. I’m disappointed the ski season in over with, but then again, I hadn’t skied since May 2nd. Good year though. 73 days, a new high for me. And the bagel shop is somehow still in business.
Snowbird reported 14″ overnight and more than 60″ in the past four days. I got my skis and boots out of the basement and drove up to Snowbird for maybe my last pow day of the season. I met up with Conrad, Jim, and Erik after a couple of runs. The skiing was awesome. The snow was as light as a February storm and deep. We had an incredible run on the Cirque, some of the deepest turns I’ve ever had. One of the best pow days of the season. Nothing like a powder day on May 2nd.
Conrad comes up for air
Final day of the year at PCMR. We skied a little in the morning and drank a bunch of beers at the Corner Store. My last run of the day was an ill-advised, 8 PBR-deep, trip down Pay Day. I somehow wrecked, giving myself some road/slush rash on my arm and breaking my left binding. It didn’t really break, but rather popped past vertical. I tried to kick it back into place only to send my brake flying down the slope, almost sending my brakeless ski to the bottom of the hill as well. Giving up, I gave Kallie my ski and skied my last run of the year drunk and on one ski.
Just like Lane Meyer on the K-12.
I finally got a chance to use my new (used) tele boots. I skied in a flannel shirt and ski pants, drank a PBR on the lift, and ripped some sweet tele turns. A Red Sox hat and Subaru Forrester that constantly travels 10mph under this speed limit in the left lane were the only things missing from making me a legit tele skier.
Me doing my best tele impersonation.
I skied some deep slush until my legs broke down and I could barely stand, which was about an hour and a half. Sad that on my 70th day I didn’t have the leg strength to tele more than a few runs. I need to tele more. It’s fun.
Karl and I skied PCMR for a few runs. It was warm and overcast. The snow sucked. But a day with skiing is better than a day without skiing.
Karla, Gold, and I skied our last day of the season at Solitude.
Since I had to make a Costco run for the bagel shop, Gold and I returned to Solitude for a few runs in the morning. Our goal was to make it back out to Crystal Point for some couple day old powder turns, but we never made it. I was running late, then we got stuck at the shop, missed the first snowcat shuttle from Deer Trail to Summit Lift, and got to Honeycomb just in time for the patrol to close the canyon due to rising temperatures. We were forced to ski the short traverse after the snow had thawed and refrozen. Combined with a slippy and grabby runout to the lift, and it was one of the more difficult runs I can remember skiing this season.
With not much motivation to venture off trail, Gold and I started filming some SICK groomer footage for an upcoming Groomer Edit.
I attempted to meet Chris Gold and Mike Kisow at Solitude Resort around 8am. Solitude tweeted that Big Cottonwood Canyon would close for avalanche control at 8:30 am. I got to the canyon at 8:10 and made it a couple miles up before reaching a Salt Lake County Sheriff makeshift road block at 8:16. Just eight cars away from freedom and the awaiting three feet of untouched snow in Honeycomb Canyon, I had to sit in my car for 50 minutes while UDOT did avalanche control work in the canyon.
I made it to the hill around 9:30, having missed little. Little Cottonwood was closed the previous day, sending all the Alta and Snowbird skiers over to Big Cottonwood. The resort must have had it’s busiest day of the year, because everything that had been opened was tracked out. I can only imagine how many Solitude locals waiting in line started yelling “go back to your canyon.”
The patrol eventually opened up both sides of Honeycomb for the first time in three days. We took the short traverse on our first run, finding 1,000+ feet of untouched powder. Awesome run.
As the snow started to set up a little, we made our way further across the Honeycomb traverse. We followed that up with a traverse out to the Boundary Chutes and a trip all the way out to Crystal Point. Awesome day.
It snowed 25″ overnight at Park City. I skied most of the morning by myself. I got first tracks down Ski Team Lift Line, one of the bump runs off Silverlode, the weird hill between Double Jack and Thaynes, 10th Mountain, and Black Forest twice, all before the patrol opened Jupiter at around 10:45 am.
I hiked (and sidestepped) Scott’s Bowl twice before running into Mike Kisow in the lift line and hiking it a couple more times after that. The ridge between the two bowls on Scott’s had some of the deepest snow I’ve ever skied. My first run, I had to stall out a couple turns in order to clear snow from my throat. The following runs, I had to keep my jacket and neck warmer pulled up to my goggles in order to breathe.
We skied hard for the rest of the day. So hard that I didn’t stop once to get a single video or picture. Nor did we have time to stop when I got frost bite on my face while hiking across West Face in the strongest wind I’ve ever felt. My skin turned brown and green and oozed pus for the next couple days. Just a grotesque reminder of how good the snow was on Tuesday.
I skied Solitude with Karla. It snowed a ton, but was a little heavier than usual. Can’t complain though, it’s April and it’s snowing hard. We had some good runs on Powderhorn in the morning, skiing the front face a couple times before moving to the Cirque.
We were just about to make out way to the Summit Lift via snowcat (Sunrise lift is broken), when the mountain shut down for a 45 minutes or so due to one of the craziest events in the history of weather… THUNDERSNOW!!!
Check out Lewis Black’s discussion of the Thundersnow phenomenon:
It snowed 8″ last night. I woke up and skied Deer Valley today with a bunch of people that rip. Conrad hooked us all up with vouchers for the day. We skied with a posse of at least eight people in the morning. We skied some pow and dropped some cliffs. One of the best days of the season.
Check out the video of Bransford throwing a front flip off the cornice on Empire.
I went to PCMR on Friday. I skied with Sam in the morning and my parents in the afternoon. Sam and I found some good snow on 10th Mountain, Scott’s, and Pioneer Ridge before hiking Jupiter Peak a couple of times. We took a couple videos of us skiing some heavier snow and jumping off some rocks.
Me jumping the rock around O-Zone. Mike says they call it Snow Safety Rock, because the patrollers throw explosives and hide behind it. Looks like they tried to blow up the rock that morning.
I had lunch with my parents and skied a run on 10th Mountain, but had our day cut short when we got a call informing us that my Grandma has pneumonia and is in the hospital.
I skied Solitude with Gold again. The snow was awesome. We got first tracks all over the hill. We skied powder on Powderhorn, dropped some cliffs, hit some jumps, skied some trees off Summit, traversed both sides of Honeycomb, found some pow on Milk Run, and were worn out by 2pm. Awesome day. One of the best pow days of the year (not that there have been many to choose from. Take that Ullr).
Chris Gold sends it off the Diving Board
On Wednesday, I skied Solitude with Chris Gold. A huge storm was in the forecast and didn’t start snowing until a few hours before the resort opened. By the time the first chair loaded, there was at least 6″ of new snow at the resort base area. A lot of the face had been pretty heavily skied under warm temperatures the previous week, thus leaving a firm crust with ice and lots of bumps hidden by the new snow. It was a little sketchy on the front side of the mountain, but we found that conditions were a lot better on Summit and Honeycomb. The snow was a foot deep in the trees. Some of the best skiing was on Navarone, from the top of Eagle. The new snow was sluffing into the gullies, making for some bottomless pow turns in places.
By the time we left the hill, it had snowed another foot or so. Which made for a good Ski Day #61…
Me Skiing Pow On Milk Run from fatbearfehr on Vimeo.