Finally on my last day a forecast of fresh pow pow! Utah's Wasatch Range is world famous for blankets of downy snow like nowhere else. It's the fact that these mountains rise out of bone dry desert which makes the snow so dry. Once you've ridden on it, there's no going back. One time at Alta in a 38" dump I remember people from Montana and New Mexico hollering, "It NEVER snows like this back home!" NOTE: Click on this photo and look in between the branches to the left on this photo and you'll see the real word of the day!
With a forecast of more snow overnight, Ed was urging me to stay an extra day
. Although the overnight forecast was for five to eight inches, locals know micro storms can drop a good three times that much up on the hill! But I absolutely had to be back in Portland, so I was set.
. Although the overnight forecast was for five to eight inches, locals know micro storms can drop a good three times that much up on the hill! But I absolutely had to be back in Portland, so I was set.Still, we had four inches the night before, and then it began to snow after noon again - in earnest. Today we picked Deer Valley for variety. Deer Valley is a jumble of peaks and lifts spread across a micro range. While the trails are nice, unlike Sundance, here the management has never relaxed its fervor for development. Amongst some of the peaks developments of million dollar homes sprout like weeds. Riding the lift, you sometimes pass over a heated driveway and peer into somebody's living room!
Then there is the casino-like Empire Lodge - a mega hotel complex under construction smack up the hill.
And the lifts seem to go in haphazard directions - we skied off the top of one lift and accidentally found ourselves riding to the bottom of a completely different lift several times. Still, the soft feathery powder is all that we needed to enjoy this day given to us from Gods above.
The snow was terrific. And the crowds minimal. I found lots of wind-protected runs and tree / mogul runs here, and the hero snow made us feel super human. I brought two pairs of skis to Utah Rossignol R11 - slalom racing skis and my 50/50 frontside/backside mid-fat skis. This day I decided to use my racing skis - silly me in this snow! But they did great in the moguls.
The snow was terrific. And the crowds minimal. I found lots of wind-protected runs and tree / mogul runs here, and the hero snow made us feel super human. I brought two pairs of skis to Utah Rossignol R11 - slalom racing skis and my 50/50 frontside/backside mid-fat skis. This day I decided to use my racing skis - silly me in this snow! But they did great in the moguls.
It started to dump about an inch an hour in the afternoon, but a brief respite offered a chance to get Ed skiing down the side of this trail...looking good, Ed! (Left side of trail)
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