Alta, UT 1/1/06 - 17 in. new
- Thread starter Admin
- Start date
hit up the canyons 8:15 this morning. Nailed first tracks all morning as more and more was gradually opened, moved from saddleback towards dreamscape and was third chair on dreamscape when it opened. Did 4 laps of fresh tracks. About 15-18" new snow here, albeit some spots well windblown and inconsistent, but defintely better than yesterday's cement...
Well, the road didn't open until 9:50 a.m., so we weren't on the Collins lift until 10:30. Those lucky enough to be staying at Alta had the place to themselves for over an hour.
The day's saving grace, though, was the avalanche control work. Stuff off the High T had been fairly tracked up by the time we got on the hill, but a good half of Alta's terrain was still off-limits (which is why the open terrain got tracked up so quickly). We were about to board Collins while Marc_C was still on the road down by Tanner's, so the kid and I got one run in before hooking up: Watson Line to Tower 10 Traverse to Christmas Tree to Lone Pine. Our untracked line on Watson Line was pretty wind-slabbed, so that was a bit of a disappointment, and the remainder of the run was through chowder.
Once the three of us were together, we hit Fred's Trees, still delightful, and worked our way through Watson Trees and some other creative routes back to the Collins base. Shortly thereafter, though, on a hunch we followed a few others and hiked up to High Notch, arriving at the Backside gate about 30 seconds before the patroller who was opening it. \
/ Literally hundreds of acres awaited about 20 of us who were lined up at the gate.
Directly below the High Notch entrance, though, was one of the most massive avalanche debris fields I've ever seen. And that wasn't the only one that we saw, either. Hardly. Devil's Castle ran clear across Cecret Lake. Literally all of Ballroom, and most of Baldy Shoulder, was a debris field. Four or five large slides ran on East Baldy across the Germania Return.
The kid and I traversed out the High Notch line to the third chute in East Greeley, dropping down through divine untracked turns. Above the bench it was wind-smoothed, but below the bench we found the 17" of untracked snow we'd been looking for. In our powder-drooling frenzy we lost Marc_C, who had in fact dropped into that debris field and reported that even there it skied just like powder. We all hooked up again atop Sunnyside.
One more run out Yellow Trail, and we broke for lunch at Alf's at 1:30 as we waited for Supreme to open. We were just cashing out as we heard over the cashier's radio that Supreme was open, but only to skier's left of the chair line. We inhaled our food and headed over, but of course with only 1/3 of the terrain accessible from that lift open for skiing things were already pretty hammered, although we did find some fresh stuff in the trees. As we got to the bottom we noticed that the gate into Supreme Bowl had been opened, so with the liftline and a 10-minute lift ride to get there we were a bit late in arriving, but still found fabulous snow along the Challenger ropeline and down into the Tower 10 Chute.
We wrapped up the day with a final trip down Eagle's Nest at 3:45. 15,307 verts today, all of them quality. And we really nailed the timing on the opening of the High Notch gate, to boot!
The day's saving grace, though, was the avalanche control work. Stuff off the High T had been fairly tracked up by the time we got on the hill, but a good half of Alta's terrain was still off-limits (which is why the open terrain got tracked up so quickly). We were about to board Collins while Marc_C was still on the road down by Tanner's, so the kid and I got one run in before hooking up: Watson Line to Tower 10 Traverse to Christmas Tree to Lone Pine. Our untracked line on Watson Line was pretty wind-slabbed, so that was a bit of a disappointment, and the remainder of the run was through chowder.
Once the three of us were together, we hit Fred's Trees, still delightful, and worked our way through Watson Trees and some other creative routes back to the Collins base. Shortly thereafter, though, on a hunch we followed a few others and hiked up to High Notch, arriving at the Backside gate about 30 seconds before the patroller who was opening it. \
/ Literally hundreds of acres awaited about 20 of us who were lined up at the gate. Directly below the High Notch entrance, though, was one of the most massive avalanche debris fields I've ever seen. And that wasn't the only one that we saw, either. Hardly. Devil's Castle ran clear across Cecret Lake. Literally all of Ballroom, and most of Baldy Shoulder, was a debris field. Four or five large slides ran on East Baldy across the Germania Return.
The kid and I traversed out the High Notch line to the third chute in East Greeley, dropping down through divine untracked turns. Above the bench it was wind-smoothed, but below the bench we found the 17" of untracked snow we'd been looking for. In our powder-drooling frenzy we lost Marc_C, who had in fact dropped into that debris field and reported that even there it skied just like powder. We all hooked up again atop Sunnyside.
One more run out Yellow Trail, and we broke for lunch at Alf's at 1:30 as we waited for Supreme to open. We were just cashing out as we heard over the cashier's radio that Supreme was open, but only to skier's left of the chair line. We inhaled our food and headed over, but of course with only 1/3 of the terrain accessible from that lift open for skiing things were already pretty hammered, although we did find some fresh stuff in the trees. As we got to the bottom we noticed that the gate into Supreme Bowl had been opened, so with the liftline and a 10-minute lift ride to get there we were a bit late in arriving, but still found fabulous snow along the Challenger ropeline and down into the Tower 10 Chute.
We wrapped up the day with a final trip down Eagle's Nest at 3:45. 15,307 verts today, all of them quality. And we really nailed the timing on the opening of the High Notch gate, to boot!
