WOW. Just….wow! Jason and I headed to Snowbird ski resort today and the high hype surrounding it was not unwarranted. Our SLC friends and new friends we made on the ski bus all gave a general consensus of Snowbird being the best resort in terms of volume of snow. Yep yep yep- we hard ourselves a good old fashioned powder day.
Jason pays homage to the snow gods and goddesses
Fingers and thumbs appreciated another day off, and quads burned instead as we carved through about a foot of powder. The temperatures were cold, maybe high teens or low twenties (Fahrenheit), and I was definitely happy to be warming up on the runs. What a wild change from the desert sandstone we experienced but a week ago!
We skied until the lifts closed (why not take advantage of such good snow??), and hung out in the parking lot all warm and cozy in the van as we waited for the onslaught of inevitable traffic to wane. After about an hour and a half of sipping hot cocoa (thanks to the jetboil I purchased at REI in Vegas) and hanging out in the van, we peeped outside to clear off our windshield. Just as I was about to clear off several inches of snow off of the windshield, a ski patroller on a snowmobile whizzed right up to us and yelled, “You need to be moving out of the canyon right now or be inside a building - it’s interlodge!!”. I explained that I was about to clear off the windshield so we could leave, but that was not sufficient. “Fine, we will head inside,” I admitted defeat as I knew we not only had to clear off our windshield, but use a shovel to clear a path for the van to budge out of its snow-locked parking spot. Snow tires are good, but not sufficient for getting the van out of so much snow. The skimobiler whipped over to go inform another group that interlodge had been declared (by the way - “interlodge” means that the avalanche mitigation team has declared the canyon risky enough to slide that everyone must seek shelter). Somehow, in a matter of minutes the ski patrol got a different message and we were allowed to leave. In the moment, we were relieved, but telling this story to Fiona she declared, “Oh you should have stayed in the canyon! A free overnight in the canyon and then you’d get first tracks the next day!”. D’oh! Well, we left, patronized Whole Foods where we also microwaved our frozen Indian food dinners bought from Trader Joe’s, and off to bed. Good day of skiing.