When we woke up it was raining down in the Salt Lake Valley. But as Caroline Gleich, a Salt Lake ski celebrity once said, "When it's snowing in the city, you know it's dumping in the mountains, puking!" Well we knew rain in the valley would mean snow in the mountains too.
When we got out to the lift line, there were a few hundred people already lined up to catch that fresh snow. While waiting for the lifts to open, we could here dynamite blasts all over the mountain. Some of the blasts sounded, and felt, like they were right on top of us. Those blasts were usually followed by a cheer from the rippers waiting to get on the lift.
Both days we skied there was not much terrain open due to the high avalanche danger. We were able to ski in each area of the mountain though. Our favorite was the sweet run off the Wildcat lift. Again, this is an old-school double chair. We couldn't see much and there were a lot of cliffs in the area, so we only took one run off that lift, but it reminded us of the Pali lift at A-Basin, one of our favorites in Colorado. The trees right underneath the Collins lift were pretty dope too with a nice pitch, wide open trees, and tons of snow. But the highlight for me was Bear Paw, I skied it 3 times. The pow was so sweet here that I started to choke on the snow as I got hit with face-shot after face-shot.
The one thing that stuck out to me about Alta is that it is a step back in time. It is one of the oldest ski areas in the country, and aside from the fact that many of the lifts are now high-speed quads, it really felt like you were skiing back in time.
By the way, if you're a snowboarder, don't expect to get on a lift here. That is because Alta does not allow snowboarders to take a lift up the mountain (they are allowed to ride down, and sometimes riders can be seen ripping at the end of the day after coming over from Snowbird; we didn't see any though, the Alta/Snowbird connection was closed due to avalanche danger). When asking a few people why snowboarders were not allowed on the lifts, the answers usually revolved around how the terrain has some flat spots and is not conducive to snowboarders. However, it is pretty clear that the real reason is a little bit of snootiness against boarders. Either way, it didn't bother me, I will never set my feet into a pair of snowboard bindings, I'm a skier for life!
-Steve
"Born On Ice, Perfected In Powder"
P.S. The Alta Peruvian Lodge is a pretty special place and deserves its own blog entry to be written sometime next week.
This is the sign at the mouth of the highway leading into Little Cottonwood Canyon. The rain changed over to snow about 3 miles in.
This is a t-shirt that they sell at the gift shops. Alta, and Utah in general, is a little snooty when it comes to Colorado, they think their snow is better. However, nothing in this entire country is as great as Vail's Back Bowls, they are legendary. Oh, and they almost never close down for avalanche danger so you never miss out on those epic powder turns when it's snowing.
We had to dig out our rental car after the snow stopped on the 2nd day. No, we didn't get plowed in, that's just 28 inches of fresh that we got over a day and a half. Pretty dope, huh.
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