Lava Hot Springs, Pebble Creek, Mar. 18-19, 2023

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
After an energetic Iron Blosam we were taking it easy as we drove north. With some slack time I visited my grandparent’s graves at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in SLC.

IMG_9075.JPG


They lived in Salt Lake from 1934-1944 and probably bought the gravesites when my mother’s sister died in a car accident in 1939. My grandmother died in January 1988 and to my consternation my mother wanted no part of snow and thus waited until the first of May to schedule the burial and memorial service. But LCC had the last laugh. On Alta closing day May 1 it snowed 20 inches and even a few inches down in Salt Lake. I skied Alta May 1, Snowbird May 3 and the memorial was May 2.

We drove 3 hours north to Lava Hot Springs. The archway has a water slide (not open in winter) into a pool out of the pic to the right.

IMG_9080.JPG


There are 5 pools, supposedly of varied temperatures like the ones in Puelo, Chile that we visited in Dec. 2021.

Here we are enjoying the largest pool:

P3183945.JPG


P3183947.JPG


We moved next to this one.

P3183954.JPG


Sign above that pool:

P3183955.JPG


There’s no way the pool was that hot as I could barely get above my knees at the 45C pool in Chile but I was able to immerse in this one. The water was slightly hotter near the grates to the left of Liz in the second pic above.

I liked this pool where I could hang from the bar and float with both neck and back in hot water.

P3183974.JPG


One other pool had Jacuzzi jets. Saturday is obviously the peak day at Lava Hot Springs, and a local guy said crowds were about average for Saturday. This is still heavily LDS eastern Idaho, so no surprise with this warning above the changing room

P3183979.JPG


No Borat swimsuits here!

I started feeling ill Saturday, had chills and fever that night. I bought 6 COVID tests at a Pocatello pharmacy Sunday morning and tested negative. So we only skied a half day at Pebble Creek Sunday, though it’s primarily west facing, which would mean best conditions in the afternoon anyway.


PebbleCreek.jpg


Conditions were not full-on spring but in gradual transition. It was about 30F in the parking lot. Overall conditions varied more by altitude than exposure. There are three groomed runs south of the Skyline lift. Max Out is the closest to the lift.

IMG_9087.JPG


The three upper groomers converge into one very wide mid mountain section here.

IMG_1055.JPG


Then the runs split out again. Runs like Sun Bowl and The Drop were firm, but not as slick as they would be if the snow subsurface were manmade.

The best groomer was Stacy’s, north of the lift and with close to direct north exposure.

IMG_1058.JPG


The snow was still good where Stacy’s turns left into the gully below. Then a catwalk goes farther left and emerges into Easy Street not far above the bottom of the Skyline lift.

If you traverse farther out to Upper Green, it is not groomed but still overall was winter snow.

IMG_1066.JPG


We got a chuckle out of this sticker on a lift tower.

IMG_9088a.JPG


I e-mailed it to our former admin.

We did not see anyone skiing the Skyline chair liftline before about 2PM.

IMG_1071.JPG


That was overly conservative IMHO because it was mostly winter snow, especially on skier’s left. About halfway down Al’s Cut drops off to skier’s right, due north facing with excellent snow.

IMG_1072.JPG


Liz spraying snow on Al’s Drop farther down:

IMG_1081.JPG


I skied The Rock twice. It’s a very short but moderately steep run with soft chalky windbuff.

IMG_9093.JPG


Second time for that Liz skied along its edge by the trees.

IMG_1076.JPG


In the top half of the above pic you can see some of Pebble Creek’s expansive sidecountry. The part you’re looking at is south facing and if you go beyond you are probably committed to at least the bottom of the Aspen beginner lift. The ravine at the bottom of Stacy’s is quite deep and it’s unclear how to get past it. There’s slackcountry to the south also. While exposure is sunny the return to the ski area looks more straightforward. There could be great corn snow but unfortunately Pebble Creek’s closing day is this Sunday March 26.

Topography reminded me of Arizona Snowbowl with similar vertical and exposure and the gully along the northern boundary. But I find Pebble Creek the superior area:

1) Arizona Snowbowl is narrower, with mellow blues on its south ridgeline and in that gully. The steep runs drop between the two and are shorter than advanced runs at Pebble Creek.

2) No question Skyline is a steeper lift than Agassiz. It’s a slow chair but we skied 8 runs and 15,200 vertical in 3 hours.

3) Regional context: Snowbowl is the only “real” ski area in Arizona so it can be mobbed on weekends and powder days, probably analogous to the SoCal areas. Pebble Creek is about as far under the radar as you can get, bounded by SLC to the south and Jackson/Targhee to the north.

So no surprise our former admin scored a bell to bell powder day on President’s weekend.

That video is very well done, and it tipped us off to visit Lava Hot Springs the day before. Just below Pebble Creek's parking lot is this ski sculpture.
IMG_9086a.JPG


As for my health, I managed OK as it was a sunny day, though started to cool off after 3pm. I continued to chill and left all of my ski clothes on for the 2 hour drive to Driggs and through dinner at Teton Thai. I still have a decent appetite and can taste food normally. But anyone who knows my sensitivity to overheating should note that my leaving ski clothes on indoors for 4.5 hours after skiing is a huge red flag. We drove throiugh Tetonia on the way to Driggs and checked out the view from Adam and Alexa's property there.
IMG_9097.JPG


Sunday night sleeping was more chills and fever. I did not ski today while Liz and Lonnie skied Grand Targhee. I felt better when I got up but did not leave the hotel room until Liz picked me up at 3:30 to drive to West Yellowstone.

At 10AM I took another COVID test and it was positive. So I will miss at least one more ski day.
 
Visually, it has a low-budget Park City look to it. Gotta love that 70s logo.

anyone who knows my sensitivity to overheating should note that my leaving ski clothes on indoors for 4.5 hours after skiing is a huge red flag.
I can now confirm that.

You should contact all of your fellow swimmers at Lava Hot Springs and inform them that you were highly contagious there. :eusa-naughty:
 
Tony first time getting covid? How many days were you down? You vaxed? Am I allowed to ask that?
 
Yes this is first time COVID for both of us. I now believe we have been lucky, see comment about tseeb and wife below. I did not have the strong chills and fever last night like Saturday/Sunday nights so I'm probably on the downside. But we are in the middle of 3 weeks of planned skiing so I'm going to try to get us on Paxlovid starting tonight. Liz had minimal symptoms over the weekend and was fine skiing Targhee yesterday. But she's not feeling well this morning.

Liz and I were extremely aggressive about getting vaxed due to our travel lifestyle. We were in the J&J clinical trial in October 2020 and Liz got the vaccine then and I the placebo, though we didn't know about those until late March 2021 as Liz had no soreness from the shot.

I got a first vaccine in January 2021 due to my age and a heads-up that walk-ins could be accommodated in a sketchy neighborhood a mile from where the 1992 L.A. riots started. Liz was in Florida in February, signed up online as being a health care worker for her mom (which she was for 7 months in 2020) and still had to drive 240 miles one way to Jacksonville for an appointment, which were very had to come by in retiree heavy counties like Pinellas.

California was pretty good about giving second shots on schedule by February/March to those who showed cards documenting their first. I got a third shot in July 2021. We both got J&J's in October 2021 as follow-ups in the clinical trial. And we both got bivalent shots last September.

I view COVID now as very close to the flu. The vaccines protect against severity but no guarantee you won't get the virus. We know 5 other people who have had COVID after the bivalent vaccine as well as recommended doses before. That started with tseeb and his wife, who got COVID in Portugal barely a month after their bivalent vaccines.
 
How many days were you down?
We were always taking Saturday off and skiing Pebble Creek Sunday. Since then I've missed 2 days so far and Liz one. Liz started feeling worse this morning so we just cancelled her Big Sky Ikon reservation for tomorrow. At least we will be in the same place the next 4 nights. I've improved vs. the prior two days but still have a ways to go before I should ski.
 
Interesting history on your grandparents. Thanks for sharing. I'd been through Lava Hot Springs on one of my trips from Jackson to SLC, but didn't stop. I would like to try Pebble Creek sometime.

Sorry to hear you and Liz caught it. Hopefully everyone else at Iron Blosam didn't get it after ducking it two previous years there. Three of the four people I was traveling with tested positive in Portugal after 12 days in Spain. My friend was buying a lot of cough drops our first night in Lisbon and tested positive the next morning (10/24). He got the one dose of Paxlovid his wife had received from her sister. His wife was positive two days later and my wife the next day (10/27). It's possible we were exposed on 10/21 sharing elevator, in tunnel getting to or waiting for elevator that climbs 500' in about a minute inside mountain to get to castle in Alicante although exposure could have been earlier.

I didn't test until I got home on Halloween. I was positive for almost a week, but never had any symptoms. I was the only one of us that was able to see some of the sights in Portugal after they tested positive until our last day there. Lucia and I received last booster on 9/7, the first day it was available locally so it was closer to two months before we got it.
 
Last edited:
Pebble Creek looks like a great ski hill. Would you consider it reliable for snow in a normal year? Do you know how much snow it averages per season?
Adam and Alexa sure have a nice view from their block of land. Or parcel. Or section. Or plot. Whatever you call it in The States.
 
After an energetic Iron Blosam we were taking it easy as we drove north. With some slack time I visited my grandparent’s graves at Mt. Olivet Cemetery in SLC.

View attachment 34766

They lived in Salt Lake from 1934-1944 and probably bought the gravesites when my mother’s sister died in a car accident in 1939. My grandmother died in January 1988 and to my consternation my mother wanted no part of snow and thus waited until the first of May to schedule the burial and memorial service. But LCC had the last laugh. On Alta closing day May 1 it snowed 20 inches and even a few inches down in Salt Lake. I skied Alta May 1, Snowbird May 3 and the memorial was May 2.

We drove 3 hours north to Lava Hot Springs. The archway has a water slide (not open in winter) into a pool out of the pic to the right.

View attachment 34767

There are 5 pools, supposedly of varied temperatures like the ones in Puelo, Chile that we visited in Dec. 2021.

Here we are enjoying the largest pool:

View attachment 34773

View attachment 34774

We moved next to this one.

View attachment 34775

Sign above that pool:

View attachment 34776

There’s no way the pool was that hot as I could barely get above my knees at the 45C pool in Chile but I was able to immerse in this one. The water was slightly hotter near the grates to the left of Liz in the second pic above.

I liked this pool where I could hang from the bar and float with both neck and back in hot water.

View attachment 34777

One other pool had Jacuzzi jets. Saturday is obviously the peak day at Lava Hot Springs, and a local guy said crowds were about average for Saturday. This is still heavily LDS eastern Idaho, so no surprise with this warning above the changing room

View attachment 34778

No Borat swimsuits here!

I started feeling ill Saturday, had chills and fever that night. I bought 6 COVID tests at a Pocatello pharmacy Sunday morning and tested negative. So we only skied a half day at Pebble Creek Sunday, though it’s primarily west facing, which would mean best conditions in the afternoon anyway.


View attachment 34779

Conditions were not full-on spring but in gradual transition. It was about 30F in the parking lot. Overall conditions varied more by altitude than exposure. There are three groomed runs south of the Skyline lift. Max Out is the closest to the lift.

View attachment 34769

The three upper groomers converge into one very wide mid mountain section here.

View attachment 34759

Then the runs split out again. Runs like Sun Bowl and The Drop were firm, but not as slick as they would be if the snow subsurface were manmade.

The best groomer was Stacy’s, north of the lift and with close to direct north exposure.

View attachment 34760

The snow was still good where Stacy’s turns left into the gully below. Then a catwalk goes farther left and emerges into Easy Street not far above the bottom of the Skyline lift.

If you traverse farther out to Upper Green, it is not groomed but still overall was winter snow.

View attachment 34761

We got a chuckle out of this sticker on a lift tower.

View attachment 34770

I e-mailed it to our former admin.

We did not see anyone skiing the Skyline chair liftline before about 2PM.

View attachment 34762

That was overly conservative IMHO because it was mostly winter snow, especially on skier’s left. About halfway down Al’s Cut drops off to skier’s right, due north facing with excellent snow.

View attachment 34763

Liz spraying snow on Al’s Drop farther down:

View attachment 34765

I skied The Rock twice. It’s a very short but moderately steep run with soft chalky windbuff.

View attachment 34771

Second time for that Liz skied along its edge by the trees.

View attachment 34764

In the top half of the above pic you can see some of Pebble Creek’s expansive sidecountry. The part you’re looking at is south facing and if you go beyond you are probably committed to at least the bottom of the Aspen beginner lift. The ravine at the bottom of Stacy’s is quite deep and it’s unclear how to get past it. There’s slackcountry to the south also. While exposure is sunny the return to the ski area looks more straightforward. There could be great corn snow but unfortunately Pebble Creek’s closing day is this Sunday March 26.

Topography reminded me of Arizona Snowbowl with similar vertical and exposure and the gully along the northern boundary. But I find Pebble Creek the superior area:

1) Arizona Snowbowl is narrower, with mellow blues on its south ridgeline and in that gully. The steep runs drop between the two and are shorter than advanced runs at Pebble Creek.

2) No question Skyline is a steeper lift than Agassiz. It’s a slow chair but we skied 8 runs and 15,200 vertical in 3 hours.

3) Regional context: Snowbowl is the only “real” ski area in Arizona so it can be mobbed on weekends and powder days, probably analogous to the SoCal areas. Pebble Creek is about as far under the radar as you can get, bounded by SLC to the south and Jackson/Targhee to the north.

So no surprise our former admin scored a bell to bell powder day on President’s weekend.

That video is very well done, and it tipped us off to visit Lava Hot Springs the day before. Just below Pebble Creek's parking lot is this ski sculpture.
View attachment 34768

As for my health, I managed OK as it was a sunny day, though started to cool off after 3pm. I continued to chill and left all of my ski clothes on for the 2 hour drive to Driggs and through dinner at Teton Thai. I still have a decent appetite and can taste food normally. But anyone who knows my sensitivity to overheating should note that my leaving ski clothes on indoors for 4.5 hours after skiing is a huge red flag. We drove throiugh Tetonia on the way to Driggs and checked out the view from Adam and Alexa's property there.
View attachment 34772

Sunday night sleeping was more chills and fever. I did not ski today while Liz and Lonnie skied Grand Targhee. I felt better when I got up but did not leave the hotel room until Liz picked me up at 3:30 to drive to West Yellowstone.

At 10AM I took another COVID test and it was positive. So I will miss at least one more ski day.
Nice views from your son and daughter-in-law's piece of land. Are they planning to build a house there ? Move there permanently?
 
Would you consider it reliable for snow in a normal year?
It has a bad reputation for snow. That's why we went this year. The brochure quote is 250 inches. I estimated 225 for Zrankings. The overall exposure is somewhat north of due west, but the lower 1/3 of the mountain may have issues if there is little/no snowmaking. I saw no evidence of snowmaking. It's a continuous fall line mountain, probably does not ski well with a base under 3-4 feet. Reported base last week was 95 inches.
 
Back
Top