Park City Mountain Resort, UT 11/23/14

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Day 3: Plan B.

No offense to PCMR, but they weren't my Plan A for today. I went to bed last night with dreams of thigh-deep November blower dancing in my head. Alas, Ullr had other ideas.

After the 6:30 a.m. alarm sounded I got up and grabbed my tablet to check overnight snowfall totals. The storm delivered as expected (and keeps delivering as new snow totals have now hit 25" and the third and final wave doesn't arrive until overnight tonight).

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But that wasn't the problem. This was:

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I thought about Solitude or Brighton instead, but I figured that everyone else had the same idea. I was pretty convinced that Alta would indeed open for the afternoon, so I opted to wait it out and grab another cup of coffee. Telejon and TheOtherAmy did the same. Bobby Danger and AmyZ headed for Snowbird, which is still limited to one route down only off Gadzoom.

At 11 a.m. Alta announced that they'd update their opening announcement shortly, which further confirmed my suspicions. But at 11:45 a.m. word arrived that I was wrong all along. The storm was winning and avalanche control efforts were losing. They wouldn't open at all today.

Alta":2w01oooo said:
After our morning of work, this great storm is still ahead of us. We are going to continue control work and grooming this afternoon and remain closed for skiing. We plan on opening Monday morning at 9:15. We are sorry you had to miss skiing today!

From what I've heard about slides today at both Alta and Snowbird, they probably made the right decision. Bobby Danger tells me that during the day a natural release from the ridgeline above Restaurant Row (i.e., from the vicinity of the Cirque Traverse) ran across the groomer flats just above the Mid-Gad Restaurant. That prompted Snowbird to close for a while this afternoon, too.

So I pointed the truck toward Park City. I had an Epic Pass to pick up, and I figured that I'd still get in a ski day by taking a few runs. Like Evren I concluded that because Canyons Resort isn't open yet that would be the shorter season pass line, and that turned out to be true for although all of the windows were occupied when I arrived, no one else was in line ahead of me.

Pass in hand I managed to score a parking space 25 yards from the First Time chair. I rode First Time to hook up with Tiny Tim at PayDay.

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OK, what were the conditions, you may ask?

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  • Busy. Our first liftline took a good 20 minutes, but that was largely because it was utter every-man-for-himself chaos. By the time we returned for lift ride #2 PCMR had stationed employees to organize the line and things flowed much more smoothly, pretty much 5 minutes each ride.
  • Snow was pleasantly soft. With the new snow mixed in it really didn't ski like manmade at all. This was really good cruising, especially because I didn't get on it until around 1:30 p.m.
  • Choices were limited, either Homerun the whole way or Treasure Hollow/Homerun. That didn't seem to dissuade the numerous out-of-towners I spotted in the line. They must've arrived early for the Thanksgiving holiday.

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A pleasant four runs kept my ski conditioning program running, and allowed me to notch day #3.

For those who may be thinking of venturing up LCC tomorrow, UDOT just now announced that Little Cottonwood will close tomorrow at 6 a.m. for avalanche control, estimated opening 8:30 a.m.
 
solitude has up to 16". only apex & moonbeam. asked about potential opening of powderhorn and eagle and they said they hoped to have them open for thanksgiving. this wasn't the only time this happened today. nice opening weekend for sure.

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