Snowbird 2006

Pre-Trip – We decided on Utah for our 4th annual ski trip location because it seemed that everywhere we went to ski always had a layover in Salt Lake City. We thought it’d be nice to try a ski trip that didn’t have a layover. After consulting with Chris Bradfield, my only good friend with enough skiing experience to make resort recommendations, we decided on the Alta/Snowbird resorts. We ended up going with Snowbird because Alta bans snowboards and we thought Dirk (a snowboarder) would be joining us. Turns out he couldn’t make it, so we could’ve avoided all the reggae music by skiing Alta instead… In fact, it turns out that most of our group couldn’t make it: Justin had to go back to South Africa for work; Chowdary had to travel with his wife to renew her visa; Dirk had to re-do lots of paperwork to correct a mistake in the way his company borrows money (or lends it or something); Chris didn’t see the point in travelling when he had good snow in his backyard; Walter didn’t appreciate being called The Palsy Bullet, so he decided to search out new winter activities elsewhere; Graeme wasn’t in a confident financial position. We thought this was going to screw Erik out of joining us, since all the room deals were for double occupancy only. But I did a quick search for nearby motels and found the incredibly cheap Sleep Inn was only 13-15 miles away from the resort. So the trip group consisted of myself, Nicole, and Erik; a substantial decrease from last year’s group size.

The one major drawback to this trip is the cold I recently introduced into our group. I brought it home from work and gave it to both Nicole and Erik. I was mostly over it when we left for the trip, but Nicole had just gotten to the fever and chills stage. Erik was in the pre-cold sore throat stage. The cold really sapped a lot of energy from Nicole and I, knocking us off our typical pre-ski workout regimen. This year, we’d even bought our own ice skates to use (ice skating does a good job of hitting the same leg muscles and balancing muscles you’ll use in skiing) but never got the chance to use them.

Day Zero – We arrived in Utah early in the afternoon on Saturday. Since the resort lodging that Nicole and I had booked didn’t include a Saturday stay in our nice package deal ($99 a night per person, includes lift ticket), we checked into the Sleep Inn with Erik for the first night. We had a quick Moons over My Hammy dinner at Denny’s, before driving into downtown to check out the Mormon Tabernacle (apparently, the only thing worth seeing in downtown Salt Lake City).

We found the Mormon church pretty easily, since it’s a giant castle in the middle of an otherwise modern city. We tried going into the largest building in the square (the big castle), only to be turned away at the lobby. A man wearing an all white suit told me that I wasn’t welcome any further than the lobby if I wasn’t a member of the church. Well, we had no idea what to expect… We were just told there was some kind of huge organ in there that we were supposed to see. He told us we were welcome to visit the Visitor’s Center, so we went to check that out.

The Visitor’s Center is a great place to go if you are looking to be creeped out by religious people. The main floor consists of a miniaturized model of Jerusalem, with light-up markers to tell you where Jesus hung out. All along the walls were giant (8-14 feet diagonal) paintings of Jesus hanging out with various folk. The next level down had some wax sculptures of various folk from religious stories and some interactive displays which mostly just played those Latter Day Saints commercials. The top level had a 20 foot tall statue of Jesus, in front of a domed mural depicting a starry sky. People were sitting down in front of it very seriously. I think there were more statues to view at this level, but I was scared off by a gaggle of proselytizers who were blocking the pathway. The proselytizers were everywhere, greeting everyone with the friendliest smile you’ve ever seen. Each had a name tag with a flag to represent the country they were from and the book of Mormon tucked under there arm. They were all pretty young and relatively attractive girls. After we realized we weren’t going to see a gigantic organ in the visitor’s center, we decided to leave.

As we exited, we realized that there was a huge snowstorm that started up. I volunteered to fetch the rental car and let Nicole and Erik stay dry and warm. The sprint to the car was treacherous, due to the wind and the ice that was pelting me… But I later found that it was far less treacherous than what I had escaped from. I pulled up to the visitor’s center in the rental car and sent Erik an AIM message. I waited a good ten minutes before they finally made it out. They had apparently been Mormon’ed in the doorway… The proselytizers had finally cornered them. They asked them what they thought about what they saw inside, and Erik (reportedly) spoke at length about the impressive artistic features of some of the paintings. The girls commented that it seemed like Erik was an artist and then asked if he or Nicole where Christian. Erik answered semi-affirmatively that he was raised Lutheran and Nicole gave a curt ‘No’. When they asked Nicole if she believed in god, she answered curtly again “No, I’m not a faith-based person”. Somehow the conversation morphed from there into Erik attempting to give the young ladies a lesson in rational values, but I got the impression that he didn’t do a convincing job. In fact, after I heard the full story, it sounded less like them getting Mormon’ed than the missionaries got Erik’ed.

The snowstorm seemed like good news for our skiing, but bad news for our drive up the mountain. We were planning on riding up with Erik in the morning, but after talking with the hotel staff about it, I decided against it. I figured it wasn’t worth the risk if we had the option of taking a professional transport (with snow tires and four wheel drive) versus our dinky Grand Am rental car. I called and made a reservation for Canyon Transportation to drive us up to Snowbird in the morning.

Day One – Nicole and I got a late start up the mountain with Canyon Transportatin (departed about 9:30 am) because of a planned road closing that morning. We were expecting the conditions to be pretty bad, but the road was surprisingly clear. I guess the idea of a Sunday drive up the mountain for some fresh powder was enough of a popular idea that lots of cars helped clear the road before we got there. Erik had, until this point, been planning on taking the ski bus up and down the mountain. After I saw how cleared the roads were, I messaged him to skip the ski bus and just take the rental car. Buying the round trip up the mountain was still a good idea for Nicole and I, because it saved Erik the trip up to pick us up on our day of departure. The driver was a friendly guy and we talked about fun stuff to do in the city. There really wasn’t anything. He recommended seeing the organ in the Tabernacle. When we told him our story, he said it sounded like we went into the Big Church, and not the Tabernacle (who knew those were different!?)… We decided to try again one day this week.

We checked into The Inn at around 10:30am, leaving our bags locked up in their closet. The actual check-in time isn’t until 4pm, so they give us everything but the room key. We put on our ski boots and walked over to the rental location. We both ended up in the cheaper package for ski’s with Rossignol brand, mine were 160 and Nicole’s were (I think) 140. I looked at the longer “sports skis” (as the upgraded package called them) and just thought they would be too unwieldy with my post-cold legs.

We hiked over to the Chickadee lift, which services a tiny little green run, to see if we still knew how to ski. I had a lot of trouble getting my boots at a comfortable setting. I’m not sure what the cause was, but I ended up having to fidget with them a couple of times each day that we skied. After 2 painful runs there, I realized I wasn’t feeling very confident. I had resorted to my horrible “butt-swishing” maneuver, as opposed to leaning on the blades of the skis and letting them turn you. We decided to stop for lunch and give Erik a chance to meet up with us. We grabbed a quick bite at the Rendezvous in the Snowbird center.

After lunch, we headed down the green run Ski School Lane to get over to some other lifts which serviced some longer green runs. We ended up doing Big Emma a few times. The runs around it aren’t well labeled and we ended up doing a steep and mogul’ed blue in there. Fresh snow was falling as we skied, which gave us pretty poor visibility but some nice fresh tufts to tear through. Unfortunately, a lot of runs were closed that day due to the high winds. Nicole perfectly described the fresh snow that we skied as “creamy.” The more fun we had, the higher our confidence level grew. It was really some of the best powder I’d ever felt beneath my skis. We were all feeling the effects of the cold though and hit exhaustion pretty quickly this first day. Doing the long flat green runs were especially difficult in my uncomfortable boots.

That night, Nicole and I dined at the italian restaurant located in the Iron Blosam lodge, the Wildflower (I believe it was called). I had a glass of Wishing Tree Shiraz 2004, which was very cheap and quite tasty. It had a nice sweet flavor to it. We started heading out for dinner kind of late, around 8:30pm, and found out that most of the restaurants close up at 9pm.

Day Two – Nicole and I got up around 7:30am. I had trouble rousing Nicole from sleep, but I didn’t want to miss breakfast (after cutting it so close for dinner). The previous tenants of our room had the alarm set for 4:25am, so I was worried that we would be considered deadbeats for thinking we could sleep in until 7:30am and still get breakfast… turns out, it’s a cinch to get breakfast right up to 11am. Who knew… We headed over to the Forklift, were we would end up getting breakfast every day we were there. We went over in ski gear minus the hardware, then went back to the hotel for our boots, skis, and poles. As we got back to the ski center with our ski gear we ran into Erik just as he was getting off the parking lot shuttle.

We got geared up and hit Big Emma again for a quick warmup. This day, the tram was open which services the peak of the mountain. After one run on Big Emma, we headed right over to the tram. I would be very worried about hitting Snowbird during a peak time, as the tram entry way is shaped like the line to a Six Flags roller coaster. It looks like there could be quite a wait to get on if the mountain was busy. Luckily, we never had to wait in line, though they do pack you into the tram like sardines.

The view from the peak was fantastic. There’s a great view of the city peaking out between the canyon road that leads from the city up to Snowbird. After taking a glance at the backside of the mountain (the Mineral Basin), we decided that looked like the most fun. There’s a zig-zagging green trail which leads down to the bottom of the basin, with some blue/black easily accessible if you want to hop off the trail. I jumped off-trail at a few of the turns on the way down and really felt the joy of cutting your own, original tracks in very deep fresh powder. Prior to this, it was almost inconceivable to me why anyone would ski a double-black diamond run… Now I know why… Because everyone else was scared to do it, you get to be the first person to touch that snow. Skiing the fresh powder added a whole new component to the skiing: if your footing wasn’t perfectly balanced, one of your skis can easily get caught in the powder and you’ll leave it behind. I went down a run that was off-trail (must have been considered black) where I had a pretty bad fall. I did a face plant with a nice front flip. The run was extremely steep and mogul-ish and I let my forward momentum get ahead of my skis. The fall caused my neck to pinch up the next few days, but my skiing still improved each day.

I found a nice little ramp that I could jump off of on this day. I got Nicole to make a video of me jumping it and it looked like I caught about 4 inches of air. Pretty lame, but I still consider myself a ‘student’ of this sport. I tried the jump about 2 or 3 times more that day, but I don’t think I ever topped the amount of air that Nicole caught on video that day.

At the end of the day, Erik ended up taking the tram ride back down while Nicole and I opted for a long blue run (Chip’s Run) which ran straight down the front side of the mountain. I went off the path for a bit of a black diamond trail (Primrose Path) that was pretty fun. By the time Nicole and I got to the bottom, my legs were destroyed. At one point, I joked that we might have to call Mountain Rescue to come get us… But we toughed it out and finished the run.

That night, Erik did a round-trip down the mountain so that he could join us for dinner. We ended up getting some pretty bad sushi. We are very loyal to our local downtown Dallas sushi joint (Oishii), and this evening’s experience re-enforced that loyalty.

Day Three – Erik made it up the mountain in time to join us for breakfast at the Forklift this morning. Also, Nicole and I discovered that people who were staying at any one of the lodges could check there hardware for free overnight, right next to the tram and right outside the Forklift. So, we only had a tiny little walk to get our skis and poles. I convinced the group to go straight up the tram this morning and hit the Mineral Basin first thing. This time, we opted for the lift which serviced the norther side of the basin. This actually opens you up to a large bowl that provides a lot more opportunities to ski some of the deep powder (though it was now become a crusty top after 2 days of sunshine). The runs were shorter on the north side, but immensely more varied and fun.

Nicole took her bad tumble today and got to test out her helmet. She took a bit of a front flip forwards, getting a neck injury much like my own. Erik and I didn’t have a good view of where she fell down, so we missed the fact that she was having some trouble getting back up. A nice stranger offered to help her. She was a little angry at Erik and I when she caught up with us. We made up though and did a few more runs in the basin.

At the end of the day, I somehow convinced Erik and Nicole to try a very intimidating looking black diamond trail with me. I believe we took “Last Choice” down, but the paths aren’t very well labeled. I’m sure we missed Shireen, which would’ve been the first exit from the trail leading across the ridge. Technically, it could’ve been the one labeled as a blue trail, with a black diamond difficulty. The part we skied was extremely steep and completely ungroomed, so we might have missed the path that was supposed to make it blue-ish. I took it down like a bullet (or, as I became accustomed to saying on this trip, did it like taking off a band-aid). Erik did pretty well on it, but Nicole let fear overcome her a bit. She made it down, although pretty slowly. The scale of the map seemed to suggest that we would’ve been close to the mid-mountain restaurant after that black run, but we still had a long way to go of blue runs. We were exhausted by the time we finally hit the restaurant.

That night, Erik felt a bit too tired to drive back down the mountain, so he hung out with us until we were ready to grab dinner. We tried the Lodge Bistro, where I had the best cut of pork that I have ever put in my mouth. Also, we cleared up some confusion about how to pronounce ‘gnocchi’… Apparently, Erik had been duped by a wily frenchman. I tried a 2-4 year old Blackstone Merlot, which wasn’t too bad. For desert, Nicole and I had a delicious 6-grape port served in ridiculously tiny glasses while Erik enjoyed a fine sip of Courvoisier served in a gigantic sifter. We exchanged tastes of our drinks and putting my nose in Erik’s sifter really opened my nostrils up. That’s some strong stuff.

Day Four – Erik joined us for breakfast at the Forklift again, before we went right back up the tram to the backside of the mountain. We stuck to the northern side of the basin again, this time going much further off-trail. Nicole got extremely confident this day, often leading me further off-trail each time we went down.

On the previous days, I had gone in between a few tree paths without problem, but I tried a path on this day, which didn’t work out for me. As I approached the trees, the distance between them seem to narrow and the amount of braking distance I had on the other side of them before hitting a cliff edge seem to get even shorter. I paniced a bit and fell in some very deep powder. When I tried to use my poles to get myself up, my pole easily submerged into the snow all the way up to my wrist. I kept trying until I got the pole to catch with most of the handle sticking up, which I then used to push myself up awkardly on the skis… Scooting forward towards the cliff with my butt almost dragging. I did finally make it up and when I reached the cliff edge, I had completely lost my nerve. I went off it at a nice angle and coasted over to the side to rejoin Erik back on the blue path.

I revisited my ramp this day as well. I figured out a way I could get myself some more speed coming straight at it (previously, I was turning into it, so it was hard to keep up the velocity). After a practice jump with a little more height, I got Nicole to setup the video camera again. This time, it looks like I got about 1 to 1.5 feet of air. I had made an excellent plan for getting more speed and more air, however I had no plan for landing. As Chris Bradfield put it, I had a yard sale in the landing zone. The best bit is my ski pole which is more than halfway punched through the powder, with the wrong end poking up. We had a lot of fun examining the video frame by frame, like it was the Zapruder film. You can see exactly the frame where my left ski is caught in the powder, then when I punch my pole handle through the powder, then submerge my face and helmet completely in snow, before tumbling around to face the camera with a smile on my face as I make my final plop. I’m really proud of how well Nicole caught all the action, which isn’t easy when you’re using a digital camera as a camcorder (especially when that digital camera’s lcd doesn’t work well in direct sunlight).

The night before, Erik and I were playing with the various filters on our similar Canon digital cameras. Somehow, I ended up leaving my camera in Sepia mode, so all of my pictures from this day will have that old-timey orange hue to them… I’m really sorry about that. Though, some of the pictures still look fine in orange, it really made some of the more treacherous runs we did look quite quaint.

We found this great off-trail path which put us up on top of a giant mound of steep, choppy, deep, crusted-top powder. Nicole and I skied it a few times before convincing Erik to try it with us. He was hesitant, because he’s biased against anything but the completely packed stuff. I skied first and got setup with the video camera. Unforunately, I didn’t realize that all the important action would’ve been at the starting point, so I didn’t have the camera zoomed in when I started recording (and you can’t change it once you start). Nicole took a gentle fall (her first time falling in it!) after her first couple of turns, but got right back up and skied down no problem. Erik drifted down a little ways using just one ski edge. He finally worked up the nerve to turn to the other leg and lost control. He took a bad tumble and dislocated a component of his ski bindings. He started to drag himself down the slope and I yelled at him to ski it down. He yells back that his ski’s are broke. He is so far away, I can’t see what he’s pointing at. I yell back, How are they broke? He yells, How the hell would I know. At this point, I realize this conversation isn’t going very smoothly… But I still yell back, What is the symptom which makes you believe they are broke? He very animatedly points at a piece of his skis that I still can’t see. His plan is then to hike down through the powder (which, at points, is over his knees in depth!) then hike back up the packed stuff to the lift. I stop someone skiing by and ask if they know what channel to use for mountain rescue. Erik retorts that he isn’t hurt, so he doesn’t want rescue. I still think mountain rescue’s toboggan ride beats the shit out of an uphill hike, so I persist. The friendly skier shouts at someone riding the lift to tell the lift operator that we need a rescue. Someone gets off the lift and ski’s right over to Erik. He takes a look at the top catch for the ski binding and figures out how to snap it back on (Erik thought it was broke for sure, and didn’t realize it snapped back on so easily). We thank the friendly stranger who then skis away. Erik finally makes it to the bottom and takes a much needed rest. Before Nicole and I ski off without him, I comment: “It was a noble effort… And, besides, The Lord Hates Cowards!”

Erik still had a few more runs in him, as did Nicole and I. At the end of the day, Erik opted for the tram ride down again while Nicole and I hit Chip’s Run for one last time down the front side. I took an even earlier exit off Chip’s Run to get on the black diamond Primrose path. It was a lot of fun. We were skied to near complete exhaustion again when we finally made it to the bottom. Amazingly though, we had skied more runs each day of skiing. We were definitely feeling the soreness after this last day.

Erik made the round-trip down the mountain again, giving Nicole and I time for a much-needed nap. That night, we went back to the Wildflower restaurant, this time with Erik. We ordered a whole bottle of the Wishing Tree Shiraz 2004 and really enjoyed it. Erik even tried to take a sniff of the twist-off cap! Though it was still a cheap bottle (comparatively), it’s very tasty. After dinner, we went back to the room and revisited the highlights of the trip through our accumulated pictures. We got a lot of really great shots this trip and I’m really happy with some of the video we got.

End of Days – We took Canyon Transportation back down the mountain to meet Erik at the Sleep Inn. We had a late flight out (5:10pm), so we had time for some more sight-seeing. We decided to give it another shot to find that giant organ in the Tabernacle. The driver who took us down the mountain warned us that it was likely closed because they were retro-fitting the building to withstand earthquakes. I stepped inside the Sleep Inn to find a Tabernacle brochure and I called their 1-800 number. Sure enough, the Tabernacle is closed until Summer 2006. We head over to Barnes & Noble so that I can refresh my reading material for the plane, then grab a very long lunch at Pei Wei. We wasted a lot of time talking about programming philosophy/methodology. We stepped over to Baskin Robbins after lunch (we’re on vacation!) then headed over to the airport.

Wow, I wrote a lot. In summary, it was a fantastic ski vacation, with an amazing amount of accessible/deep/creamy powder… I would definitely Ski Utah again and I recommend Snowbird resort (especially the Basin) to all of my friends.