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3/11/2019 Solitude-Brighton combine

abc

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Mar 2, 2008
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Lower Hudson Valley
It's MY last day in Utah. I have only used one of my 5 Brighton days.

Nor do I know if I'll get a chance to go back before the season's over. (though given the deep snow pack, such a possibility exist)

My legs were pretty much fried from skiing 2 weeks non-stop prior to this. I wanted just a nice cruising day. On the other hand, I also know there's got to be leftover powder in the trees and far away fringes. So the dilema of what to ski was constantly there.

Solitude on a Monday is a very sleepy affair. Arriving 9:30, we still managed to park within 20 yard of the front of the building. No one fuss, no one hurried.

Something was slightly off. None of the ticket scanner were working. They were just... left open. We cruise straight to the lift. I commented "free skiing days today or what?" Well, only AFTER we were way up the mountain one of the liftie insist we must go down to the office to exchange a Solitude only pass as the Ikon pass can't be read by the scanner.
That's a drag. As those of you who's been there know. It's a bit of a trek to get around the mountain. Going all the way back to the bottom put us back to square zero! To make matter even more pointless, the "Solitude pass" was never read or shown the rest of the day anyway.

After the false start, we trekked all the way back up to the Summit chair and into Honeycomb Canyon. Today we didn't have as much luck. We missed a ski patrol guy at the mouth of the Canyon. I would have asked him which side of the canyon has better snow. Without guidiance, we chose the west wall as that's the most expedient one. But it didn't have the best snow. My legs got worked some more, more than I had in mind for my last day. So after stopping for lunch, we decided we'd go over to Brighton!

Second trip up the Summit chair, we did the tiny bit of hiking to the knoll overlooking the valley between Solitude and Brighton (you can see all the tracks behind)
74EC0444-784D-4565-AC90-E80C7892B32A.jpg


Then it's the long cruise down Sol-Bright into the gate between Solitude and Brighton! But before we got there, I happened to look back and saw the Fantacy Ridge in its full glory in the sun:

BC845AB0-03D5-4D73-AFDC-762968D30622.jpg

Just as we crossed into Brighton, the sun decided to go into semi-retirement. We did catch a moment when the sun was between clouds to do 2 laps down the Milly bowl. Snow was super soft and quite deep. (sadly, no more photos due to cloud)

The Solitude pass also interfered with the Brighton scanner (which, unlike the Solitude scanner, was working). So we tried to hunt down the ticket office at the Milly base. Not finding it, I thought perhaps I have better luck if I put the Solitude pass down low in my pant's pocket. That did the trick. The scanner correctly picked up the Ikon pass in my chest pocket. We finally were able to cruise!

Up the Crest and Snake River, we got a glimpse of the valley beyond. One can see Sundance far in the distance from there.

But time was running a bit short. I would have like to go up the Great Western to hit a line I accidentlly discovered that's full of powder again. But I have a flight to catch later in the evening. So we worked our way back to Sol-Bright gate. A long cross country skate on the lower part of the Sol-Bright trail too us back to the Apex chair which we HAD TO take to get back to the main base.
 

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