Sorry if this is a bit long. Y'all know how I tend to ramble...
I just got back Saturday night from a week-long ski trip to Park City, Utah with the Clear Lake Area Ski Club and ten other Texas Ski Council clubs. This was my first trip to there and I had been hoping to sample the famous Utah Powder. I knew it was a bad sign when there were lots of golfers on the course next to the airport in Salt Lake City. The snow conditions were about as bad as any of the locals could remember for early January. Even still, there was plenty of good (and some great) skiing to be had. Most days the temperatures got above 40 with a nightly low in the upper 20's. Lots of sunshine to soften the snow as well.
The flight in and following bus trip were uneventful. We stayed at the Park Station condos a block away from the town lift. The first morning I caught the second chair up and discovered why most people took the bus to the resort base: that lift takes forever to get you up the mountain. That was the one and only time I took that lift. Still, it's interesting to catch a lift in the middle of town. There were several runs at Park City that were closed due to insufficient snow coverage. Most of the steeps were open, however. You just had to watch out for rocks, tree stumps, and other nasty things that like to tear up your skis. The snow quality wasn't too bad considering the weather. On Sunday, our first ski day, I skied the Main Bowl under the Jupiter chair with a British couple that had also never been there. At 11:00, that made for an awfully steep "warm-up run" for my first day of the season. The groomed runs were great for cruising but every mogul run I went on had rocks poking through. The best snow on the mountain was under the Jupiter lift and on Scott's Bowl, which required a five minute hike. I did it five or six times during the week. The McConkey's area was fun but had a lot of rocks to dodge. Beverly Dreher and I hiked up into the Puma Bowl area off the Pinyon Ridge. Worth the effort but neither of us earned any style points for our technique.
As partially a result of the snow conditions, there were more than a few out of control skiers. I witnessed one collision from the chair lift. By the time I brought a ski patroller back to the scene they were both gone so evidently no one was hurt too bad. Linda Lambert (our trip leader's sister) was hit from behind by some idiot. She went to the clinic for x-rays but survived with only bad bruises. She wasn't able to ski the rest of the week. I don't know of any other significant injuries from our group. Considering we had 60 people there for a week we beat the odds. I managed to avoid skiing into any boulders or bouncing off trees like I did on last year's trip to Taos. I never even released a ski. I did go bouncing through a mogul field under a lift at Deer Valley but the fall was fairly painless, thanks to my helmet. You miss one turn when trying to do a "zipper line" and look out below.... I'm sure the people on the lift were amused.
On Tuesday, a large Texas contingent went over to Deer Valley. I got over there early and checked in with Michel (aka Mike) Charat, a former coworker who retired early from Rockwell after 28 years. He and his wife moved to Sandy, Utah and he works in the ski rental shop at Deer Valley and gave me a free ski tune. My skis have never run better. I spent the morning bombing down the groomed blue runs. I tried two of the non-groomed runs but the were really icy and chattery. Not real ice, mind you, as you couldn't see through it. I did about 12 runs in the first two hours. The lift operators got to know me really well. :) At around noon they opened the new Empire chair for the first time this season. A mountain host was posted at the bottom warning everyone of the poor snow conditions. A ski patroller was showing off the huge gouge in the base of her ski courtesy of a rock. I passed on it at first but changed my mind and went up later. The snow in the bowl under the chair was of the "Sierra Cement" variety: very heavy and deep. It was fun but was a lot of work thanks to my ineptitude in those conditions. At 1:00 Michel got off work and we skied together the rest of the afternoon, including another run down Empire Bowl. On Michel's first "turn" he went flying over his skis and did a head-plant. He was also wearing a helmet, although the snow was soft enough to make for a fun landing. I lucked out and never hit any rocks up there, although I saw a few.
I spent the night at Michel and Ann's house and we headed up to Alta Wednesday morning. Ann was having eye problems and stayed at home. We got there early and parked two cars away from the door to the Albion lodge. We got on the chair as soon as it opened at 9:15 and skied until after 4:30. Alta is now one of my favorite ski mountains. I absolutely had a blast. One of my best ski days ever. I even bought an Alta sticker for my helmet. We covered almost all of the mountain (never made it into the Devil's Castle area). We even took the high traverse, which had lots of rocks to go over and around and did a beautiful couloir (chute) that was about 20-30 feet wide and several hundred feet long. The snow was great all over the mountain, although not the usual powder you'd expect there. We skied bumps, trees, chutes, bowls, cruisers, you name it. We hiked up to the Catherine's area twice. The second time up the Supreme lift Michel's belt bag got caught on the lift chair and he got to play "Bullwheel Cowboy" as he went flying around the bullwheel past the unloading area. Another missed Kodak moment on my part. I really wish I'd remembered to bring a camera as we had some fantastic views. On a bump run near the top I found the front part of a Nordica 977 boot like my old ones. The plastic in some of those older boots was prone to brittle fracture in cold weather. I gave it to the lift operator to put on display. I can only imagine what Alta would be like with fresh snow. Our last run of the day was a very long gully run in what is a creek bed when the snow melts. A fun way to end a fantastic ski day. We stopped by Deer Valley on the way home and Michel gave my skis a quick tune to smooth over the minor rock scrapes. Nothing like having a friend working in a ski shop.
Thursday was our TSC club race day at Park City. We had 32 CLASC members signed up to race. Dick Reitz won the prize for the lamest excuse for not racing: "I have a very important presentation to make at work next week." As race director I got to ski last. Since our club was also last that means I was the 301st racer that day. Made for a nice slick race course. One of the other club's officers was heard to whine that the course was "unskiable because of the ice." We proved him wrong easily. Al Waltz was the only one of us to not finish. He was demoing some new skis and fell at the first gate. Michelle Barber went for the photo finish and hit the last gate, falling and releasing both her skis a split second after she crossed the finish line. Everyone who raced seemed to have a good time and noone got hurt. Beverly missed a bronze medal by one handicap point. Mike Lippold and I managed to get bronze medals. The picture of me turned out fairly well and I actually bought it, if you can believe that. I scanned it in (see below), although our scanner made it a bit fuzzy.
For the individual races on Friday, they set up a single giant slalom course on a nice long black run. It had 40 gates with a very difficult steep section at the start. At around 10AM Beverly and I went up to check it out and you could only see the first 2 or 3 gates, due to falling snow and fog. We ended up having seven of us from CLASC race. Bill Lively was feeling sick and had to pass on it. The race started 30 minutes late, which turned out to be a blessing as the weather cleared enough to see just as we started at noon. The pacesetter ran it in 45 seconds, giving us a par time of 43.27. Lisa and Michelle Solberg competed in the women's division along with Beverly. Lisa had a great first run and finished third. I had a very good first run, in spite of skidding wildly around the first 8 gates. I just managed to get a silver medal with a time of 58.60 and a handicap of 35. I ended up sixth overall and third in the men's open division. On my second run I was gunning for the top spot and started very aggressively. As soon as I hit the "ice" (you still couldn't see through it) at the third gate I went down. The fastest time was by Cynthia Post of the Lone Star Skiers out of Dallas. She blew us all away with a 57.03 (handicap of 32). Perry Price had fun racing in the senior men's division and Gary Mohr and Philip Barber did a good job racing in the men's division. Gary was only one point away from a bronze medal. Mike and Terry Lippold had gone back to Deer Valley along with several others who were eligible to race. Their loss as it was a very fun (or at least memorable) and challenging course. For the two days, no TSC racer did better than silver.
I closed out the week by skiing Scott's Bowl again followed by a powder run down the West Face bowl. Naturally, it dumped snow the next morning as we were getting ready to leave. At least it made for good snowballs. :)
I will definitely have to go back to Alta. Park City had some terrain that was better than I had expected, as did Deer Valley. The town has some great restaurants and wasn't too expensive. All in all, it was a great trip!
Think SNOW!!!
