We've had a whopping 7" of new snow since Thanksgiving, so while a persistent dome of high pressure looms overhead we've had deep blue skies in the mountains.
- The moon over the Sugarloaf moonscape
The last thing you'd expect is a powder day. But with Alta opening Backside for the first time this season, that's exactly what we got.
- We discover Backside's open
We did nothing but lap backside all day, and I'm so sick of manmade groomers (even though they're better than the windswept manmade groomers at a certain other unnamed ski area) that this development didn't come a moment too soon. After crossing the saddle from Yellow Trail the traverse was a rock-strewn boneyard for about 20 yards, so that kept the riff-raff out. We honestly scored untracked on every single run until we called it a day at 1:30 pm.
- The white carpet on Backside
- The white carpet on Backside
When we got into Susie's trees there was only one other track: patrol's.
- Bobby Danger in Susie's Trees
- Bobby Danger chases the patrol in Susie's Trees
- Backside
- Backside
- Admin lovin' life (photo: Bobby Danger)
- AmyZ on Backside (photo: Bobby Danger)
- Bobby Danger on Backside
- Bobby Danger on Backside
It also meant that we could get into the north-facing lines like Eagle's Nest without the Jitterbug bootpack.
- Bobby Danger in Eagle's Nest
Base depths may be lean and new snowfall may be desperately needed, but today absolutely rocked!
It felt great to get above the gunk that's hanging over the valley with our current inversion. A note of caution, however...such inversions often lead to black ice on the roads in the morning, as was the case today. The canyon road closed for an hour this morning when someone decided to try using the non-existent "north entrance" to the Tanner Flat campground. That's a common spot for folks to go over the edge -- their rear end loses traction going around that right turn and by the time they regain traction they're pointed right over the cliff. They closed the road to allow the Life Flight heli to land and presumably to extract the vehicle as well. AmyZ (who surreptitiously joined up here this week) and Marc_C both got caught by the closure -- I was lucky enough to have barely cleared it by about 10 minutes because I planned on having breakfast at GMD before the lifts opened.
