Alta, UT 1/11/2017

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Day 25: Bell-to-bell powder.

I already had PTO scheduled for today to attend Outdoor Retailer. They moved the show up this year by several weeks, which meant that the period I typically spend booking appointments with gear vendors fell on the holidays instead of early January. Thus, I was late to book and when the forecast looked good for today, I blew it off and went skiing instead.

We had up to 6 people today, including rdwore, jtran, Kay, Alex and AmyZ. I picked up rdwore this morning and he rode up with me to catch the opening. We started the day with about 8" of new creamy, wind-whipped snow and added another 5" to it throughout the day. When we got there it was absolutely nuking.

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We'd have alternating breaks in the action and intense snowfall throughout the day. UDOT closed the LCC road from 1:30 to 3:30 to toss shells, and while it wasn't inordinately busy in the morning most opted to skip out before the road closure and folks couldn't come up for some runs in the afternoon, so after the closure we had the place to ourselves. I kid you not that we skied an absolutely untracked Amen, which starts immediately beneath the Sugarloaf quad, at 3 p.m.! We found untracked snow to ski all day.

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We went bell-to-bell, from opening to closing -- and there wasn't a single groomer run in there. It was just too damned good to stop.
 
Definitely a nice day to be out of the office... but somehow it feels like you should be skiing one of the resorts that's been getting 2-3X what Alta has in this storm cycle. If there was ever a storm cycle to try out some non-Alta goods elsewhere...
 
EMSC":2cpm41ul said:
Definitely a nice day to be out of the office... but somehow it feels like you should be skiing one of the resorts that's been getting 2-3X what Alta has in this storm cycle. If there was ever a storm cycle to try out some non-Alta goods elsewhere...

Simple explanations:
1. Friends
2. Season pass
 
Admin":hff89zot said:
EMSC":hff89zot said:
Definitely a nice day to be out of the office... but somehow it feels like you should be skiing one of the resorts that's been getting 2-3X what Alta has in this storm cycle. If there was ever a storm cycle to try out some non-Alta goods elsewhere...

Simple explanations:
1. Friends
2. Season pass

And besides, really...does it matter? Sure, Brighton tops the list with 113 inches thus far in January, but do you really think that the 74 inches at Alta thus far this month skis any differently?
 
Admin":39jxcxi8 said:
Sure, Brighton tops the list with 113 inches thus far in January, but do you really think that the 74 inches at Alta thus far this month skis any differently?

Total snowfall, nope... Just thinking that maybe 12" (or 18") at Brighton might ski differently than 7" new at Alta.

But I don't ski any of Utah on a regular basis so it could be my Colorado front range biases showing. I'd expect most everything to get skied out darn near every single day. Whereas Alta might keep enough fresh around to ski much deeper than the snow report shows for days (esp mid-week).
 
EMSC":14mvjwx8 said:
But I don't ski any of Utah on a regular basis so it could be my Colorado front range biases showing. I'd expect most everything to get skied out darn near every single day. Whereas Alta might keep enough fresh around to ski much deeper than the snow report shows for days (esp mid-week).

Some thoughts on that:
1. Deer Valley's woods must've been awesome yesterday, and mbaydala's photos on Facebook verify that.
2. As mentioned above, Alta was dead after lunch yesterday. It couldn't have been any better.
3. Yesterday's new snow was dense and wind-whipped, so 12" (or 18") at Brighton wouldn't ski any differently than 7" (or 12") at Alta. You were only skiing the top few inches.
4. Unlike the Front Range, gated terrain at some areas around here typically means successive days of untracked powder during and following a storm. You just have to know how to play your cards.
 
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