Alta conditions

Landed at Alta Sunday night, wow what a few days it’s been. We were on the day after a dump and as they opened areas we were on them like white on rice. Another surprise powder day with snow all day and a closed road in the AM. Run after run of 12+ of freshies. Supposed to snow all night and another powder day tomorrow. My aerobic capacity is lacking but the legs are holding firm.

Awesome!

Wow PICS please!

Harvey wrote

Wow PICS please!

Yeah! What Harv said

No time for pics - breathing is hard enough. I’ll try for some tomorrow

PeeTex wrote

No time for pics - breathing is hard enough. I’ll try for some tomorrow

Three is all I ask :)

I’ll post more - but needless to say - EPIC
Forgot to mention - 17” of blower

This might ruin you

Yeah, that looks like a good day

Doubt it. He could move if he wanted, or ski out there all winter. I'm guessing he likes his life.

PeeTex what are you skiing on? How fat?

I KNOW I said I'd be happy with 3 pics, but maybe a paragraph of two TR?

Good on ya man!

Ok - I’ll give you a little more, give me a day

Harvey wrote

Doubt it. He could move if he wanted, or ski out there all winter. I'm guessing he likes his life.

PeeTex what are you skiing on? How fat?

I KNOW I said I'd be happy with 3 pics, but maybe a paragraph of two TR?

Good on ya man!

Not interested in moving out there - family is on the east coast and all though skiing is great, it's not everything.

Skiing on a Nordica Defender 185, this is my exclusive western ski, so much so that I left them out there at my friends place this time.

Arrived Sunday to ski on Monday, they had 6" of 4.2%, It's getting a little blurry but I think the canyon road was closed in the AM but in any event the crowd was light. Visiting a friend for a few days, we started on Wildcat as we always do and headed right for westward ho to my favorite snow fields surrounded by trees.  It was a powder day - the first of several. Snow was light, face shots were plentiful but it didn't last long - this area is no secret. We then went all over the mountain. Supreme lift was the afternoon - Catherines, Spiney chutes, Supreme bowl and Dogleg.

Tuesday the clouds lifted and we had on and off sun. They opened Ballroom (it was not opened prior) and devils castle  we were about 20 people back in the conga line for Ballroom. We traversed out past the first gate and dropped in, the powder had held from the night before and we floated in bliss for a couple of runs. At that point most everything within easy access was pretty well chopped but the castle is big enough combined with the small climb made for several clean powder runs.
 
Wed was another powder day with 6" of 8% over night and it continued to snow all day. We kept finding fresh all over the place and we felt no need to fight for the last drop, the trip by that point exceeded expectations. Then came what everyone dreams of, an overnight dump of 17" of 4.3% and we had a rare day. Every run was like the one pic above, you got doused over and over.

Again - we let the crowd have Collins so we went right into Wildcat and started lapping. We dropped into the second chute past the second gate and just floated down, like dropping into a feather bed, Visibility was hard because you only had it when you rose out of a turn - otherwise you were buried. We kept speed up, through the trees and into the snow field where I got a little surprise - avi debris, snow with ice chunks, so much for that. We made one more run through there and decided that just lapping the ridge at the first gate and dropping in over Hamburger hill was pure bliss - no one was tracking the hill so why should we leave it untouched. It was no work and you could just make little bouncy turns without hardly breathing hard. We spooned it for 4 runs maximizing the fresh until the crowds figured it out.

I ended the day at 3 even though there was a lot more to grab. Not really so much tired but I just had enough. Went down canyon that night, had dinner with my friend, headed to my hotel by the airport.

Sounds most excellent.  

I don't really know anything about skis, I was wondering how wide they were at the waist. I google Nordic Defender 185 and Nordic Defender and couldn't find them.

Safe travels.

Sorry - Nordicas Enforcer: length 185, width 100

NP. In my experience 100 is plenty when it is pure blower.

Harvey wrote

NP. In my experience 100 is plenty when it is pure blower.

Running skinny 200s use to be enough. My last pair were Olin DTSLs at 190. I skied Utah powder in those but fuck it was hard.

I road the lift with a young guy this week, said he tried to ski on those “old” skis and they just plain sucked. I had to laugh, never heard anyone say that - but he was right, they sucked big time.  

I remember when I broke the mold and bought a pair of Salomon X mountains, my buds laughed until I showed them what these new skis would do on a spring day at Brighton in 97. We all were riding the X screams the next season and doing stuff we never would have considered before.

These new rockered 100 under foot skis are wonderful.

Arrived at Alta late - snowing hard, the canyon road plow had gone off the road so we didn’t get up to the lodge until close to midnight.
About a foot of nice snow - not the lightest but feather bed consistency.
It’s going to be a great week

We were 3 rows back at the lift In The morning.



Visibility was poor so it was tree skiing most of the day. Snowed all day. Supreme Bowl & spiney Chutes we’re sweet, Wildcat was great as usual, the chutes held the snow well. Ballroom, Devils Castle & Catherine’s all stayed closed but I bet they will be open tomorrow.

Ended another season at Alta. Arrived last week, Got back late Thursday. There was some snow last Sunday but mostly cloudy and not warm enough to soften much of the days, they have depth but need new cover. High altitude East facing was pretty good but the rest was either wind packed or frozen solid. South facing was nice when there was sun and it softened. We did find north facing trees to be rather nice though.

Get some PeeTex!