Snowbasin and Powder Mountain - here I come.

[Puck it]

I leave on 2/4. We are hitting Deer Valley for free the first day with borading pass. Or the Canyons, it will be a last minute thing. The other three days will be the Bird(like that better then Alta the last time), Solitude and Snowbasin. I hope the storm tracks keep coming for two weeks.

 

[andyzee]

I leave on 2/4. We are hitting Deer Valley for free the first day with borading pass. Or the Canyons, it will be a last minute thing. The other three days will be the Bird(like that better then Alta the last time), Solitude and Snowbasin. I hope the storm tracks keep coming for two weeks.

Good choices, I lie the Bird better as well, and Solitude is a gem that doesn't draw the big crowds.

 

[jaywbigred]

I'm not a big one for formal TRs, don't have the memory to be able to recount every run/day, but I can tell you the trip was awesome. Day 1 was Sunday at Snowbasin at the tail end of a multi-day storm that dropped 25-30 inches on most of the Northern Utah resorts. I boneheadedly left my memory card at home, so I don't have any photos (yet...waiting on the gf and my buddy to upload their photos) from Snowbasin, but it was awesome. We were skiing untracked or partially tracked snow all day. Apparently the folks at Snowbasin weren't big into tree skiing, bc we found a lot of fresh snow in the trees/brush, and not exactly in hidden spots, either.

The only downside was the complete lack of vision due to clouds/fog at the top of both John Paul and Strawberry, making them (esp. Strawberry) almost unskiable. I've never experienced anything like it. Also a downer, a local with a season pass wandered slightly out of bounds off of JP and triggered an avalanche that killed him. Another 5 guys were stranded in a nearby out of bounds location, and had to be rescued by helicopter, which we saw land near the base. Total bummer. The mountain is fun, and steep, but with so much snow on it, not that difficult.

The bathrooms and facilities were as nice as everyone said, on par with the nicest country clubs I've ever been in. Complete lack of other base area infrastructure though.

We spent days 2 and 3 at PowMow, which couldn't be more different, other than the lack of infrastructure at the base. We took a lesson on the cloudy morning of day 2, as the other 3 members of my group wanted to hear, from a local, how best for an east coast skier to handle a real powder day/real powder snow (deeper than boot deep!), and I didn't think it (or taking a lesson, generally) was a bad idea. Of course, with that as the stated desire, we got an instructor from New Hampshire. She was a lot of fun, not sure how much I learned, but the less-experienced in our group enjoyed her. She also went on and on about how poor, technically, most native West coast skiers are, and how much more coachable East Coasters tend to be. We then spent the afternoon (the sun having come out!) skiing off the Paradise and Hidden Lake chairs. We skied some steep stuff, but our faves were some of the more gentle woods, because they were barely tracked at all. Guess it makes sense that 2 days after a storm, the less steep terrain that is ignored during the storm is still pretty fresh while the steep stuff is pretty tracked out.

Day 3, my final day, we went back to PowMow and signed up for a cat ride. Lightening Ridge wasn't open yet, so we checked out Powder Country (slack country area serviced by shuttle bus) which was awesome. A variety of fall lines, steepnesses, and tree density kind of let you have a little bit of everything. And of course the snow was redic.

Then we headed over to the Sundance area and waited (for a long time) for the cat. It finally came and got us, and after getting some very in-depth recommendations from a "Powder Pro" named Bryson, we dropped into Big Kash off a tiny cornice into mostly untracked snow. We did some traversing through some combination of Carpe Diem, Y-Chute, and Candyland. We later saw Bryson in the yurt, and described to him the line we took. When he heard where we wound up in Y-Chute and Candyland, he said that the snowboard track we had traversed on, and then above, was his, and that he never would have told us about that area: "Congratulations, you found one of our secret stash spots." The snow over there wasn't as deep (was getting a touch crusty/wind blown), but everything is relative. On one of our last runs in Cobabe Canyon, my gf caught me saying "That part of the bowl looks a little skied off," pointing out that my definition of "skied off" had drastically changed in just 3 short days.

Anyway, here are some pics:

View from the condo

Cobabe Canyon:

Dom's

Powder Country:

My buddy's wife in Powder Country

Waiting for the cat

It finally arrives!

Last run: one of the untracked low angle shots in Cobabe Canyon:

 

[4aprice]

Awesome Jay. Glad you had a good time. Hope you saved some of the snow for my trip out there in late March.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

 

[jaywbigred]

Awesome Jay. Glad you had a good time. Hope you saved some of the snow for my trip out there in late March.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

Alex...we tried to use up all the snow ourselves, but alas, there is still plenty out there for you! Hope you get some new dumpage too! I know its been somewhat of a down year so far out west, but perhaps, if things work towards their averages, there will be some heavier snowfall around your trip time!

 

[St. Jerry]

Looks like you stayed right across the street from where we stayed in Wolf Creek. Great value there.

 

[jaywbigred]

Looks like you stayed right across the street from where we stayed in Wolf Creek. Great value there.

Yup, great value considering how nice the place was.