Alta 2/1/14

The weaker skiers of my team all headed home leaving just my boss and the French guy that grew up in the Alps.  He skied as a kid and then got the snowboard bug.  Now in his 40's he has come back to skiing and has a natural balance on his skis that you can tell comes from growing up on skis.  Unfortunately he did not listen to me when he rented skis and got a carving ski instead of something wider.  That coupled with an older up down style led him to burn out his legs early but man did he have fun in the light Alta fluff.

My boss man is a good skier and a very good athlete that works out every day.  With a little tweak here and there particularly in his bump skiing he could pass the PSIA level 3 skiing exam.  Having not taken a lesson in forever that is dam good in my book.  Just so you don't get the impression I'm brown nosing this I do not share my Coach Z presence with those I work with nor do I have any FB friends from work.

We debated where to go for Saturday and decided to go to Alta as we thought it would be less crowded than Snowbird and more a classic ski experience. We pulled into the parking lot at the GMD / Collins Lift at 8:15 and parked in the 2nd row.  It was a cold and partly sunny day as we waited for the lift to open in the corral.  Alta oddly opens at 9:15.  By the time we hit the summit of Collins it was 6 degrees and windy.  Since Collins requires you to ski to the bottom again until 11 am we headed over to the Sugarloaf lift.  There was a few inches of fluff over the groomers and we took a mach speed warm up run.  Then hit some low angle off piste in the second run.  By our 3rd run it started snowing and the light got super flat so we floundered thru some un seeable bumps covered in a some Pow.  We scoped out the Supreme lift that had more trees and headed over there.

Depending on the aspect there was nice sloppy seconds or even ice so we eventually found our way to the Spiny Chutes area off Supreme.  The main chute was super steep, tight and really fun.  After we started lapping the second time we headed skiers right and found great powder in the trees.  We spent the rest of the morning with that all to ourselves it seemed even though there was a 5-10 min lift line on the lift.  By lunch time it was Nuking snow and I'd say we got 7+" between 10am  and 3pm



After lunch we tried to ski the ridge to lookers right above Sugarloaf Lift but the vis was just too bad so we headed over back the Collins side and started working the High T from close to no name to rustler.  The High T was super rocky and was trashing my new Powder boards but the powder was so worth it.  In no name I had freshies with no tracks billowing over my shoulders.  Towards the bottom I thought I was skiing over a bump but it must have been a boulder where I booted out when my front buckle got bent and I double ejected supermaned into the Pow.  My boss said it was a great fall and was my first fall of the season.

We finished the day with some runs on Wildcat where I guessed right that there would be more untracked since its an old slow double chair.  

We tried heading down the road but once we looked at the line of traffic just to get out of the parking lot we headed into the bar at the GMD to have some nachos and plenty of 3.2 beer to rehydrate.  We were really lucky to hit this just right and while it was boney it was powder.

I'm headed back to Utah with my ripper son later in the season and will be able to show him around better but he will be waiting for me instead of the other way around on this trip.

The bent buckle

Ha! Good job Coach.   You know you're going after it when you trash some equipment and it was worth it.. Sort of a badge of honor.

Again, thanks for taking the time to share.

TD