Utah 2007 Ski Trip

Wow, what a trip! My main man Eric hooked us up with a sweet condo/timeshare slopeside at Park City. We got into Salt Lake City around 9:00 PM on Wednesday, April 11th. I was the first one there and Andy was shortly behind me. We waited for Eric and his cousin Jean for some time at the car rental counter and then we were off in our crappy Chrysler Town and Country minivan headed for Park City.

Park City

We arrived at Park City around 11:00 PM Wednesday night and were greeted by Eric's friend Liz. Liz showed us around the place and got us situated for the next morning. We woke up early, maybe 7:30 AM on Thursday for our first day of skiing. Park City was about 25% open as this was their last week of the season. The best run we found was called Prospector, which was steep, groomed, and wide open. We flew down that run for most of the afternoon. At one point, we were feeling a bit adventurous and wandered under the lift lines to an area we knew was closed. Immediately after jumping into the gully and I collided and skis went flying in every direction. I was able to shout to warn him a split second before smashing into his right side. We collected our gear and enjoyed the semi-untracked powder the rest of the way down the mountain. What a great warm up day!

Update 2/14/2008: Glory Hole



On Thursday night, our friend Michal arrived from Chicago. He took a shuttle to meet us at Park City and our skiing/snowboarding crew was fully in tact.

Snowbird

Friday morning we woke up not so early and headed to Snowbird. After a breakfast stop in Cottonwood Heights we rolled into the Lift House to get discount lift tickets. Snowbird was in great shape with lots of snow and most of the mountain open. After a few warm up runs on the front side we headed for the Mineral Basin. Wow! There was awesome powder everywhere and tons of untracked. I think I had an advantage over my skiing buddies as I was on my Mantra 184s and they all had carving/gs skis. I was ripping it up. The basin was great all over. We stayed there for most of the morning tearing up catwalks, jumping into untracked powder and cruising on some great bowls. What an outstanding morning!

The afternoon at Snowbird was great too. We skied a bit more of the front side and were able to score more untracked. Friday at Snowbird was definitely the highlight of the ski trip. Great conditions, everyone was in great spirits, and we had a fantastic day on the mountain.

Imaginary Units

That night we had a fat dinner of hamburgers and whiskey and then played poker for imaginary "units." Michal cracked us all up by first going all in to match my 200 units then, upon realizing he had lost saying "good thing I only had 5 units left!"

Saturday we rolled back to Snowbird for more skiing. Most everyone was feeling pretty tired by that point. I had some boot issues to contend with and wasn't feeling nearly as jazzed as I had felt the previous two days. Still, we had tons of fun and found an awesome bowl/tree run all the way on the left side of the mountain. Michal, Eric and I jumped into the gate with reckless abandon and tore up the untracked powder that was left. We pushed on and started to see signs warning us of an upcomming cliff. We were getting a bit nervous that we had overshot the lift and would have to ski all the way to the bottom to regroup. Luckily, I spotted an exit path and we reconvened at the Gad 2 chair for more runs.

"You're Fucked"

Saturday afternoon I ran into a funny situation on the lift. Andy, Eric and I were waiting for Michal at the Mineral Basin Express lift. It's a detached quad lift that services the bowls in the basin. We were first in line for the next chair when Eric spotted Michal coming down. As Eric waved and pointed at Michal I got distracted and thought it was time for us to go. Instead, the two skiers in front of us were lined up and ready to board when I jumped in front of their chair. Andy, looking for the easy way out of this tried to get the lifty's attention. The lifty, however, was busy shoveling snow into the track and missed the whole thing. Ever the compassionate and understanding one, Andy simply muttered "You're Fucked." With a little quick thinking on my part I simply let the lift push me safely out of the way and turned around to take our chair. Andy's comment however rung out the rest of the way up the lift and for the remainder of the trip. Eric and I got a good laugh out of it on the next chair up on which Andy was conspicuously absent.

Alta

Sunday we headed to Alta. Alta is known by the slogan "Alta is for Skiers." No snowboarding is allowed there. In fact, Alta recently changed its rules to allow staff to forcibly remove anyone from the mountain who is even carrying a snowboard. The ski group was down to Michal, Andy and me and we got an early start catching the first chair a bit after 9:15 AM. We found out that Alta and Snowbird are adjacent resorts and that there is a skiing path that connects the two mountains together near the Baldy peak.

I ran into a bit of trouble in one of the bowls at Alta. We had gone through a gate and I was wandering around on a peak following tracks laid out by previous skiers through the trees. When I came around a corner I realized the path I was on lead righ into a grouping of large exposed rocks. I removed my skies and carefully slid down the trail past the rocks on my but. The run was very steep with un-groomed snow and so I prepared to slide down the rest of the way to level ground to re-click in. Somehow I lost my grip on the mountain and started sliding. In the process, one of my ski poles, which I was holding in my lap jammed into the snow at the handle and and into my arm at the pointed end. It hurt and I lost my pole in the process, sliding another 20 yards or so before coming to a stop. I climbed back up to retrieve the lost pole and regrouped with Andy and Michal taking a much needed water break.

The three of us skied Alta for the remainder of the morning with Michal playing scout on more than one occasion, leaving Andy and me to the groomers. We made a bunch of nice top to bottom runs off of the Collins lift and rounded out the day by about noon. In the parking lot, I got to inspect the wound from the rock incident and realized the ski poke had punctured a hole in my jacked, my base layer, and my arm! A huge pool of blood lay just below the skin's surface and today it looks like a huge bruise.

A quick trip back to SLC and we were on our respective ways back home. Tons of skiing, good friends, and a great trip to the Wasatch Mountains. We'll have to do this again sometime soon.

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