Snowbird Cat Skiing for Nature Feb 17 2015

Sorry for the length of time to get thru all my TR’s from Utah.  It’s been pretty crazy at work coming back from vacation.  This is the last one.

After it hit 50 degrees at 11000 feet the temps went to 10 degrees overnight for several nights in a row.  We had an awful day of bad eastern skiing at Solitude and I was about ready to bag the last skiing day of our vacation. We had heard that all the Park City resorts were crowded as heck and skiing poorly so that plus a $100+ lift ticket wiped out the idea of maybe skiing Deer Valley or the Canyons for a groomer day.

We had been skunked by Pow Mo cat skiing for the whole week so I looked to see what else we could do.  One option was to use Snowbird’s guiding service and get outfitted with touring equipment and skins and ski the terrain behind Snowbird. My son and I were all set to do that until the head guide called to tell me that they didn’t have a touring set up small enough to accommodate my son. His alternative offer was for the price of a two person guiding session we would have a cat to ourselves. They didn’t want to run the cat with too many people so we could mine the trees on the North facing bowls and chutes behind Mineral Basin with the limited amount of snow left.  We jumped at the chance to ski powder a week after the last snowfall.



Getting up early and getting to the parking lot at 7:15 for our breakfast with the guides at the Fork Lift netted us literally the first parking spot in the Tram base lot.  We had breakfast with the guides Spencer and Mark who are both also senior patrollers there took us thru the routine for the day and gave us our avy beacons and showed us how to use them.  The area where we would be skiing is on Snowbirds property and is being evaluated for potential future lift serviced expansion.  They explained that they do absolutely no avalanche control work on this terrain.   They laid out the full protocol we would use of only one person skiing at a time and how they would lay out a boundary for us to ski then radio the rear guide with how the skiing is and things to look out for like crossing cat roads.  It was really good training for my son to get exposed to such a professional approach to skiing in avalanche terrain.  The danger was very low due to the current state of the snow pack they said but it is something I hope he takes with him from the experience.

Spencer explained that the purpose of the cat operation was 1)to learn about the terrain and snow pack; 2)provide clients with a basic understanding of how to ski in this environment safely; 3) the profits from the operation go to an organization that protects the watershed as this area was heavily mined and there is a need for environmental cleanup of the old mining sites.

An old mine in Mineral Basin



We loaded the pre public Tram and I’m sure this will be the only time in our lives we will be the only ones on it.

We took a couple of fast non-stop laps on groomers in Mineral Basin to warm up while the cat got in positon for us.  On a powder day we would have been getting fresh tracks in this set up which is part of the whole package.  Then we headed all the way out to the boundary and skied out the rope and down to the cat.  The best skiing was in the trees and all day was spent in the shaded North facing terrain.  They called the snow grapple which is sort of powdery little beads of snow.  We worked down the valley with our first 3 runs in one drainage where I thought the snow was outstanding.  We then moved to a father bowl and sections of chutes where we had to traverse quite a ways out.  We ended up being past Supreme lift at Alta to give a frame of reference for how far down the ridge we were.  These were the longest runs and the top of a few had some breakable crust and after a few turns became great skiing.  Once each my son and I got ourselves stuck in a section that they called the impenetrable forest which was like the tight trees between the slides at Whiteface that we had to pick our way thru.



The cat was custom built for this operation and featured really nice comfortable seating with seat belts.  The cat had built in water bottle holders and was filled with snacks which my son thought was awesome.  He spent a few rides up front with the driver watching him drive the modern snowcat.   The driver was from Old Forge and we also met a Patroller afterward that is the son of my recently retired Doctor from AuSable Forks.  The ski world is really a small place sometimes.





We ended up taking 8 runs averaging about 1000 vertical each.  I’m sure this was the best skiing in Utah that was to be had that day.  We then rode back to the Mineral Basin Lift and skied with our guides to the bottom.  The package comes with a full day ticket to use afterwards but it was already well after 1 pm and the groomers would be a letdown after our powder skiing so we decided to have lunch and call it a day.

While our experience was great for not having snow in a week this would be awesome a day after a powder day

It's funny that more people were not signing up for this since really the skiing was so good compared to what was available in the ski area that week.

how psyched is that little dude to go cat skiing. what a great experience.

Wow, what a cool experience!  Is that the tram terminal that's visible in the last photo, or maybe the top of the Mineral Basin lift?  How many clients would they normally take on a cat outing?

That is the new restaurant they are building at the top of Tram that looks down into Mineral Basin

sweet lemonade.

I was in the same area for the first time ever two days before you. Came over the Backside of E Castle and skied Dry Fork down to American Fork and up to Mineral Basin. This area is quickly becoming my favorite backcountry spot. Been there five times since!

Graupel is best described as Dippin' Dots ice cream. It's the winter equivalent of hail - formed by strong convection currents. It is often falling during Thunder snow.