Following back to back best-day-of-the-years, it snowed another foot in the Wasatch Wednesday night. Although worn out from two straight days of hard skiing, I could barely sleep that night, imagining what the next day would have in store for us. We showed up at the hill around 8:30 and skied a great cliff, powder, and jump run from Eagle to Powderhorn. Then things took a turn for the worse.
Powderhorn stopped running due to mechanical issues. We skied away from the lift to Sunrise. Rode the lift for 15 minutes. Then skied a fun, but low-angle pow run back to Apex, where we discovered Powderhorn was running again.
We skied down and waited in a line. A LINE! At SOLITUDE!?! I looked around and started noticing an unusual amount of helmets with Snowbirds and Alta Flakes.
On the ride up Powderhorn I noticed the entire bowl was filled with skiers and boarders. Not typical Solitude skiers, but skiers that rode pretty well. People were dropping all the cliffs that usually stay untouched. I even saw a guy throw a backflip! The guy next to me on the lift started complaining about Solitude’s lack of vert…
Suddenly it hit me, our worst nightmares had come to life: Little Cottonwood had been closed longer than expected, and LCC’ers were finding their way to Solitude!
Powderhorn bowl was tracked out by the time we reached the top. Fortunately, the rope to Milk Run had dropped and we filmed some amazingly deep first tracks on Parachute as we got yelled at for holding up the traverse.
After a five minute wait for the Summit Lift, we made our way to the top. The runs were a little tracked, but we had some fun under the lift and through Headwall Forest. We jumped some cliffs and found plenty of good snow. Then waited in line for a few minutes and did it all again.
Thinking back on it, if things had stayed the same the rest of the day, it still would have been one of the best powder days of the season. Maybe not what I had stayed up the night before dreaming about, but definitely top 10, maybe even top 5.
And then it happened: the patrol dropped the rope to the Black Forest side of Honeycomb. We sidestep-and-traverse sprinted to the top of Black Forest (or Buckeye Junior, I don’t know the difference), watched the majority of skiers get antsy and drop in one area too early, and eventually skied some amazing turns through the woods and lower bowl.
We rode Honeycomb Return to Powderhorn and skied Black Forest through the gate at the top. Then a lap on Here Be Dragons. Then a lap on Cathedral Bowl. And a final lap in our secret spot of Black Forest.
The crowds had disappeared, we never waited in another line, and the last four runs were some of the best I have ever skied. We called it a day around 3pm, due to dehydration, cramping and exhaustion. The parking lot was almost empty. The cars with the Alta Flakes and Snowbirds must have gone back to home to their canyon.
As we left the parking lot I couldn’t help but think how close of a call today had been. The LCC’ers had ventured up to Solitude with 30″ of new snow and saw a bunch of tracked out lines on Powderhorn, got cliffed out on Milk Run, waited in lines for a slow chair to the summit with no vert and long skates out of the flats, and took a pain in the ass traverse that they had to drop out on early because it probably didn’t go anywhere good anyway. They left around 1pm to save their legs, thinking how good their canyon will be tomorrow… if the road opens.
It could have been more, but definitely a top five powder day this season. Great snow. A great crew. And we survived another LCC invasion for the time being. If anything, it makes you appreciate the first two best-day-of-the-years that much more.
2011-2012 Ski Days: 50
Brighton: 4
Canyons (+sidecountry): 32
PCMR: 1
Solitude: 13
