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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.