Snowbird, 1/15/2010

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
I'll let admin report on Saturday/Sunday at Alta. Base depths in LCC are about 50 inches, which is close to the minimum for Snowbird to be viable. Last year at the same time the base was closer to 70 inches, and the 2 areas skied basically the same. At 50 inches there are quite a few places at Snowbird I'm used to skiing during my Iron Blosam week that aren't quite there yet. Like the entire Upper Cirque for example. Most of Alta skis normally on a 4 foot base, as I recall from that lean Christmas on 1986-87.

The one place that's way better in January with the weaker sun is Mineral Basin. BobbyD & company were detouring over there from Alta on both weekend days. And that's where I spent most of Friday morning after a couple of warmup cruisers. Coming out of the Peruvian tunnel there were a few interesting gullies that are usually completely filled in by my usual trips. I did not navigate these optimally and ended up under the lower part of the Mineral Basin Express chair, which is still sketchy. But all the wide open spaces west of the MBE still have packed powder in January, and the soft chalk is especially outstanding at the end of the Powder Paradise traverse, just short of Hillary Step.

About 11AM I was well warmed up and decided it was time to try out my new Head Jimi skis despite the inappropriate packed conditions for them. They are 130-110-120 with a slight amount of tip and tail rocker. I first went back up to Mineral Basin to ski a couple of the same runs. They seem similar to the Mantras, fairly adaptable to packed conditions for such a wide ski but more work than my K2 Recons, especially in tight spots. With even a little bit of soft snow the Jimis skied more smoothly so I'm hoping they will work well for a powder ski as I intended. Heading down to lunch Upper Silver Fox was in great shape but I ended up in another unexpected choke point where I had to step over some rocks.

After lunch I skied a Gad Chute very carefully and then a couple of runs on Gad 2. Gadzooks under the lift is not adequately covered yet so I tried STH. It had a couple of choke points but the snow quality on the rest of it was excellent. I also had a couple of Little Cloud runs that were also mostly good chalky snow.

Weather was sunny until about 1PM, with high clouds after that. By late afternoon some areas had flat light, including the final run down Big Emma to the car at 4PM. I finished the day with about 13K vert each on the Recons and the Jimis.
 
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