A Little To The Left

Was getting some cabin fever. High Pressure is sitting over the West and Southern Utah is getting really warm. Time for a trip South.

After asking around a bit we were set on Gooseberry Mesa, just outside of Zion National Park. Trails were 95% dry, offered beautiful views, and free camping (with toilets!) at the trail head.

Sunset/Stars comp


Jason with a mini-climb


Kate on the Descent


Back in Alta, and the Moon decided to come out of it's shell.


Big thanks to the guys at Over the Edge bike shop in Hurricane, UT. for the beta. It was about a 5 hour drive from Alta to the trail head. A bit much for driving in two days. Hopefully I can head back there soon. If not, I plan on heading there for a week or two after Alta shuts down for the season. Fraser or Kinerim, if you're out there, this place is #1 on the list. Better than the Slickrock trail.

Until next time, Gooseberry...

Hell yes. That place is definitely on my list for future mountain biking visits. When are you done at GMD? Mid April? I might have some stuff to do at Breckenridge, was thinking of flying, but maybe I should drive out and bring bikes.

Move Out is April 17th. Have a couple guys from back home who are talking about coming out to visit on the 24th-30th for a ski/bike trip.

I was unable to join my buddies for a trip to Gooseberry a couple of years ago. They still rave about it.

nice bike stoke!

Nice! I haven't been to GM yet. It's 60 today in Flag at 7k. I'm going to try and get some corn skiing in the next two days and then I'm thinking Sedona is going to be the thing. It should be in the 70's! It's been a very cold winter for AZ so I'm kind of stoked to have things warm up for a little while.

raisingarizona wrote

Nice! I haven't been to GM yet. It's 60 today in Flag at 7k. I'm going to try and get some corn skiing in the next two days and then I'm thinking Sedona is going to be the thing. It should be in the 70's! It's been a very cold winter for AZ so I'm kind of stoked to have things warm up for a little while.

Just recently started hearing about Sedona... might have to head that way in the spring!

next chance for a big snow for us is next Thursday. If I didn't have a buddy coming into town this weekend I'd be heading south again for sure.

Was gonna post a separate TR for this, but I'm gonna start consolidating my posts into this thread. Hope that's OK, Harv!

Teton Pass 3/3/16 with Chris and friends

I had a few days off of work and Chris and Jess along with a few other sets of friends from Alta and Gore were up in the Jackson/Driggs area, so I went for a mini vacation. It hadn't snowed more than a few inches in a couple weeks in Alta, and a few storms were going to clip the Tetons just North of us.  

I drove up Tuesday night, met up with some former Gore locals and crashed at Jake's house. Wednesday I skied Targhee, Thursday Chris and Jess came up from Jackson and I and another friend from Alta went up from Victor and met in the middle.

We booted up Mt Glory, a 1700' bootpack straight up the North side of the top of Teton Pass. It is South Facing and weeks prior had been 50° and sunny, so the boot ladder got quite treacherous in spots.

Chris and Jess


We got to the top with our sights on a NE facing bowl called Little Tuckerman's. The lighting was a bit flat so we exercised our ability to ski by braille.

Chris


Jess


Evan, a homie from Alta who moved up to Driggs to work at Targhee for the season. This was the first time he had done a tour that was more than a single lap, and he was stoked!


There was probably 5" new from the past few days. You could definitely feel bottom, but it was nice and creamy, and especially nice to ski something other than corn. I love corn and all, but it had arrived a bit early.

We hit the flats at the bottom of the bowl, and scooted across towards our next descent.

lol slowboarders


On the way down, there was a fun looking beetle-kill forest that would be a quick lap of good snow and give the boarders some extra speed to get across the flats. Decision made, we're going up!

Hi mom!


Braaap





We stopped at the bottom and ate a quick lunch. We contemplated heading up for another run, but continued our decent towards the road.

The bench rolled over into a nice steep chute. With the lower elevation and the turn towards a more solar aspect, the snow got a bit manky. Still fun, though!









It shortly benched out again, and brought us into another gully that dumped us out at the road.



The drainage ended about half way between were we had the two shuttle vehicles parked, so we each tried to hitch a ride. Chris got one to the top first, got their car, drove down to us, drove me down to my car, and then we both went to the middle and picked up the rest of the crew and gear. We met up at the top, redistributed gear, shared some high fives, and went our separate ways.

I've spent a lot of time in the past few days skiing BC off the lifts at Alta. There has been a couple 6-12" storms moving through, freshening us up from the high pressure of J̶a̶n̶u̶a̶r̶y̶  February.

Dry Fork sits behind the Supreme chair and often offers great snow with relatively low skier traffic considering how hard the stuff across the road gets his. The only problem is when the snowmobiles get up there and throw in an ugly traverse across the entire slope, ruining 50+ great ski lines in one single braap.

I rode lifts early to get some freshies before the masses got up the canyon



Then headed over the ridge for some hiking action.







Views were nice



And the snow sure was, too.



More to come..

Don't have much in the way of skiing shots. Snowed a total of 17" here but the storm got hyped up to 30+. More fell in BCC, so if you headed to Supreme or Grizzly Gulch, things got deeper. Sunset was real fancy, though.

I had an amazing day yesterday. I was woken up early because I thought I had the night shift, turns out I was supposed to work 7a-1p. 20 mins after I started working, I got a call from the desk saying a lodge guest was looking for me. I called the guy, he picked up the phone instantly.

"Hey, Ted, what's going on?"

-"I'm working what can I help you out with?"

"Sorry for such short notice, but we just had a seat open up in the heli, would you be able to fill it?"

-"Yes."

It took some coaxing, but I got another employee to cover for me for the day as I went on a complimentary day of heli skiing

So. Awesome. I didn't bring a camera along, but the wife of the guy who invited me snapped this.


We skied in BCC, just over the ridge from Alta. They took us on 6 laps at about 1200 ft a piece. Snow was a bit deeper over there than it was in the resort. The first run was down some E facing stuff with a bit of a sun crust below the 4" of new.

The next run was a bit higher in elevation and due North facing. Money.

The next few runs were N-NE facing with about a foot of new which turned a bit heavy towards the end of the day.

We got back to the base around 2:15 where we were greeted with soup, salad, salmon, and ice cold beer.

I came back, skied a few runs at the resort, and then went to the bar. When I got there, a few of our co-workers were drinking with another lodge guest whose daughter was waiting in the lobby. He had to go, but he asked the bartender if he could let us drink on his tab for the rest of the night. The only rule was we weren't allowed to go over $500. We made it to $300 and he asked us to tip the bartenders $150.

FKNA, we like it here. So grateful for the gratitude of our guests.

DUDE SO PUMPED FOR YOU!!

T-Batt,you deserve to be ski bum "King for a Day"
Alta will all ways be my favorite ski hill.

That's an awesome story, T.

Seriously
Thanks for sharing this
Awesome

Nice, but where's the pic after  $300 at the bar?

Now that's living the dream!

Dig that pic too.

Somewhere buried in this a story or ten about putting the customer first with great service, and having someone notice.  People who do this kind of stuff are happy, and they want others to be happy too.

T, if I am on to something, or you know more about this I'd like to hear it.

I try to be nice to everyone. No reason not to. One of the better parts of switching from serving to being a bellhop/shuttle/maintenance is that people are almost always happy with you. People can get unnecessarily angry when it comes to their food. I don't like getting yelled at for stuff, especially when it's out of my control.

As you've probably figured out, I like it here. I think a positive (and negative) attitude can be infectious. Be happy, make the others around you happy.

It probably also helps that I've been working front-of-house here for four years and more than half of our clientele are repeat guests -- some for three years, some for twenty. This place has a ton of turnover so after a few years the employees start to develop a much more personal relationship with the lodge guests.