Utah May 2022

jimk

Active member
As discussed in my April 2022 Mammoth trip report, I had a great four-day visit there. But there was a dark cloud hanging over that trip. My wife and I had been exposed to Covid by a close family member. I had prepaid for my condo at Mammoth. The family member didn't need our help and neither my wife nor I had symptoms at the start of the trip to Mammoth, so the two of us soldiered on and made the drive from SLC to Mammoth. About halfway through the five-night visit to Mammoth my wife started exhibiting symptoms (sore/horse throat, fever, cough) and tested positive. I still had no symptoms and perhaps somewhat selfishly kept skiing - not without some guilt. I minimized my trips inside the Mammoth summit gondola to four in four days (and only once after finding out wife was positive). I was alone for one of the gondi rides. I also often pulled up my buff when riding the gondi or chairs with others.

If the above sounds like a bunch of excuses for continuing to ski and interacting with the public after exposure to Covid, I apologize. I got Covid too and tested positive two days after we returned to SLC from Mammoth. It was the first time my wife and I had caught it and you don't realize the dilemma that can be caused by the idea of stopping your life and going into full isolation mode, so I probably didn't strictly follow CDC guidelines. Hopefully we didn't give it to anyone else. I had symptoms like a bad chest cold with fatigue, seriously for about 5 days, mildly for about 5 more days. I didn't ski for 9 or 10 days, but was able to do light household and yard chores after the first 3 or 4 days. I was out of action for a good powder dump in the Wasatch around Apr 23, but overall thankful that our variant wasn't too debilitating.

I returned to skiing on Apr 29, this is riding through a storm and temps in the 20s on the Peruvian chair at Snowbird, UT.

29 apr peruvian.jpg


Apr 30, Snowbird, not a great photo of me and Mineral Basin, but shows something remarkable. My last ski day at Snowbird before going to Mammoth and getting covid was on Apr 13. By the end of the month the entire mtn had gotten snowier and whiter since then!! A TV weather reporter said that the Wasatch Mtns got more snow in the first 3 weeks of April 2022 than in the months of Jan and Feb combined.
mineral basin 30 apr.jpg


My son and I met some friends on May 1 at Solitude for that mtn's latest closing day ever, hard to believe, but true. Often the resorts in UT close while still having quite of bit of snow cover. Snowbird is usually the only one that stays open into May. This is a friend near the summit of Solitude.
al 1 may solitude.jpg


It was only about 40 degs that day with occasional snow showers. A friend cooked chili dogs around a tailgate and it really hit the spot. The guys said I was noticeably dragging while still regaining lung power after Covid.
lunch 1 may.jpg


I find the Salt Lake Valley to be remarkably mild not only in spring, but even sometimes in mid-winter. The 5000' or so elevation climb to Alta-Bird makes all the difference. By early May flowers are blooming and high temps can reach 70s or even 80s on occasion in the valley. One nice day in early May my wife and I hiked up Ensign Peak for a great view overlooking SLC. The 4 ski resorts of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons are in the white peaks in the background.
kathy valley view 2 may.jpg


May 6, 2022. This is a view of the Mineral Basin lift line leading up to the Summit Restaurant at Snowbird. Doesn't look like much, but... For about two incredible hours this morning I had some of the best spring snow conditions of my life! I thought it was some form of magical corn snow, but a person I rode the chair with (a former Snowbird groomer driver) said, "no." It was too fresh, hadn't gone through enough freeze/thaw cycles to be corn. This part of the mtn had not been open/skied for five days and in the intervening time a couple of little 2" snows had taken place. What I skied this morning was basically soft supportable snow, about 2" of super carve-able velvet over a smooth supportable surface underneath. The entire wide expanse of Mineral Basin from edge to edge had this velvety smooth surface. It was like the whole place had been groomed and covered with a couple inches of spring snow. It was about the easiest all the offpiste in the basin will ever ski! I made 7 or 8 runs underneath and around the liftline in this photo and since it was a non-powder Friday in May there weren't many people on the mtn. Mindless, carefree swoops through gullies, flying over shoulders, I felt like a human sports car. It was sooo good I was hyperventilating on some of the runs. After about 1045 AM it turned mostly to mush, but those two hours are a heck of a memory to carry me through until next ski season!
mineral lift line 6 may 2022.jpg


Back in Mineral Basin again on May 8, I caught this view of a friend who joined us this day.
rudi expansive mineral 8 may.jpg


He took this photo of me trying to keep up with him on Big Emma.
jim may 8 snowbird (2).jpg


May 8 again, with my son. I had been based in UT for nearly four months. A few days later I departed for the East Coast. I missed Snowbird's final day of ski ops, which occurred a week later on May 15.
tram j v 8 may.jpg


Despite a few twists and turns it was a good ski season. Got in 61 days which was a PR for me. I'm thankful for vaccines and booster shots, pretty sure they contributed to the fairly light case of Covid we experienced and I hope next winter the dang thing will not rear its ugly head again.


In mid-May, taking 6 days, my wife and I drove back from SLC to our home in the mid-Atlantic. Along the way we stopped at Arches National Park, UT:

skyline arch 11 may.jpg


We also had a memorable night and day at Mesa Verde NP in southwest CO. Very cool place I'd like to return to when more of the cliff dwellings are open and I have the time to explore it a bit more. This photo in no way does justice to how large and how many of these dwellings are preserved in the park.
cliff dwelling 12 may mesa verde.jpg


While at Mesa Verde NP we stayed one night in the Far View lodge (elev 8200'). I took this photo at 430 AM of some planets and pre-sunrise off the porch of our room on May 12. Anyone guess what the two planets are, believe the view is towards the southeast?
far view planets.jpg


Random drive-by of amazing mom&pop Hesperus ski area near Durango, CO.
hesperus ski area better 12 may.jpg


My wife is a saint for the stuff I put her through. This is on the steps of St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, NM
cathedral st. francis 13 may.jpg


Coolest vehicle we saw on the drive east, '55 Chevy Nomad station wagon near Nashville, TN.

chevy station wagon .jpg



One last powder day photo, Apr 13, 2022, a friend at Snowbird:

tim peru pow 13 apr.jpg
 
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For about two incredible hours this morning I had some of the best spring snow conditions of my life! ..........This part of the mtn had not been open/skied for five days
That's most of your explanation. If that area had been skied when it was fresh powder, it would been churned and left an irregular subsurface that could take a week or more to settle out. Extremely low skier density is a requirement for smooth ungroomed corn (or the variant you experienced). The backside of Mt. Bachelor is the most consistent area I've skied for that experience.

As Jimmy Petterson observed while we were with him in Europe, with more powderhounds around these days, corn is more often experienced on groomers. Low density is needed here too to keep the snow smooth and uniform, but that can often be found in low key areas or outlying sectors of large areas.
 
I got Covid too and tested positive two days after we returned to SLC from Mammoth. It was the first time my wife and I had caught it and you don't realize the dilemma that can be caused by the idea of stopping your life and going into full isolation mode
Yes, after 4 shots Liz and I are not worried about becoming severely ill. We are more concerned that it will blow up some trip at an inconvenient moment. On our ~20 person April 17-27 bus tour of Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia one person got sick and then tested positive on day 3. She had to be quarantined in a Dubrovnik hotel for the next 5 days and was then sent home. The rest of us were tested that morning before the tour could continue. One other person tested positive at a Venice airport hotel the day after the tour ended and another 3 people after they got home. AFAIK the husband of the lady who tested positive on day 3 never tested positive.

The above was the scenario EMSC thought could happen within that Dec. 2020 group in Argentina but fortunately it did not. Jimk and wife were fortunate:
1) to be in the United States, and
2) to be traveling in their own car
The above two conditions applied to my travels to/from Florida May-Sept. 2020.
 
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Yes, after 4 shots Liz and I are not worried about becoming severely ill. We are more concerned that it will blow up some trip at an inconvenient moment. On our ~20 person April 17-27 bus tour of Albania, Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia one person got sick and then tested positive on day 3. She had to be quarantined in a Dubrovnik hotel for the next 5 days and was then sent home. The rest of us were tested that morning before the tour could continue. One other person tested positive at a Venice airport hotel the day after the tour ended and another 3 people after they got home. AFAIK the husband of the lady who tested positive on day 3 never tested positive.

The above was the scenario EMSC thought could happen within that Dec. 2020 group in Argentina but fortunately it did not. Jimk and wife were fortunate:
1) to be in the United States, and
2) to be traveling in their own car
The above two conditions applied to my travels to/from Florida May-Sept. 2020.
Just canceled our Friday trip to Portugal. We have had 4 shots, but my wife can't take the risk of testing positive and returning late to work..
We booked Austin Tx and Bentonville..o_O
 
my wife can't take the risk of testing positive and returning late to work..
??? If she got sick (for any reason, not just COVID) the day she got home and had to miss a week of work, would she be fired? Or if she gets COVID in Austin like jimk's wife got it in SLC? The lady who got quarantined in Dubrovnik had a travel insurance policy that covered the quarantine hotel cost and the change of flight for returning to the US, so that's an option if you're especially worried.

At this point it's not obvious to me that travel is riskier than normal life at home (as opposed to all the restrictions two years ago) as far as COVID is concerned. And in terms of that travel, Portugal has the highest vaccination rate in Europe. Texas and Arkansas will be safer???
 
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??? If she got sick (for any reason, not just COVID) the day she got home and had to miss a week of work, would she be fired? Or if she gets COVID in Austin like jimk's wife got it in SLC? The lady who got quarantined in Dubrovnik had a travel insurance policy that covered the quarantine hotel cost and the change of flight for returning to the US, so that's an option if you're especially worried.

At this point it's not obvious to me that travel is riskier than normal life at home (as opposed to all the restrictions two years ago) as far as COVID is concerned. And in terms of that travel, Portugal has the highest vaccination rate in Europe. Texas and Arkansas will be safer???
she's a currency trader..she has important trades that are coming due.. not a money issue..nor a catching it issue..
we can fly back to NY with a 104 fever and coughing our brains out , no questions asked..
1st world problems..
 
I'm guessing if she were quarantined in a hotel like the lady in Dubrovnik, she could work remotely from there. Is it really true that an overtly symptomatic person can't be prevented from boarding a domestic flight anymore? That's an entirely different issue than dropping a mask requirement IMHO.
 
I think if you are positive on the required test before flying back to the US (asymptomatic or not), you cannot come back for ~10 days (At least, that's what happened to a nephew traveling from Iceland to LA ~3 weeks ago). He flew to Canada instead, (which is weird on several fronts) and quarantined there.
 
It'll be interesting to see if the US ever drops it's testing requirement for flying into the country. Thus far it has prevented pretty close to zero spread (eg the virus and all it's variants are making it into the country and spreading just fine internally despite the requirement, and seems likely that spread would not be at all materially higher in the overall US should the testing requirement be removed).

The entire requirement is similar to most of TSA - "Security Theater" and the appearance of "Doing Something". Despite ample and continuous evidence of it not really doing what it is supposed to accomplish.
 
On April 29 we flew from Venice to Amsterdam with no test requirement because that flight was within the EU, and none at emigration in Amsterdam either. At the gate for the US flight we had to sign an affidavit that we had no symptoms and had been tested but were not required to show the test results as we had when departing Santiago in December and Calgary in February.

Another person on the Adriatic tour tested positive at a Venice airport hotel, changed his flight to Mexico, ended up at Tijuana airport, where he could exit on foot into the US and make his way home to Arizona.

There is a lot of "Theater" around COVID precautions these days. The only place where both vaccine proof and masks have been required since we got home from Europe was Disney Hall, home of L.A. Philharmonic.

L.A. Times article today says cases are on the rise again and that newest Omicron variants might be as contagious as measles. But so far there's only a modest increase in hospitalizations (for most of which COVID is not the reason for being in the hospital) and none in deaths. Worldometers has shown a level US COVID death rate of about 400 per day since mid-April.

YMMV. Lonnie and his wife are mildly ill and tested positive over Memorial Day weekend. A close friend of theirs in Alabama (50 years old and supposedly good fitness and health) died of COVID about 2 weeks ago.
 
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