Returning to Snowbird

Due to our ‘tour de l’hémisphère sud’ last year, we didn’t make our annual pilgrimage to Snowbird next to Salt Lake, UT. This year we’re back on track, with a quick but very fun three day trip this past weekend.

Snowbird has seen tons of snow this year, and lucky for us some of it arrived during our trip. The weekend started off a bit stiff due to lack of recent snow, but Parker (our good friend / resident expert / guide for the weekend) found a few areas where sustained high winds were filling in the runs with new snow. So we ended up getting some great runs in, even though the nice parts were interspersed with still stiff snow.

No new snow and less consistent wind on Sunday didn’t improve conditions, but we still had a nice time exploring around the mountain. We checked out Snowbird’s brand new lodge on the top of the mountain – a beautiful two story building with lots of windows.

On Sunday night at 6pm, the wind picked up at the base of the mountain and tons of snow started blowing around. When we woke up, no snow had collected on top of cars in the parking lot, but huge drifts had formed around them. The mountain reported 13 inches, which given the wind was more like 0 to 30 inches, depending on the slope and coverage. The road up Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed for a while (and it was a workday for lots of folks), so from an early start we got a few truly powdery runs in before it got pretty choppy.

Excited to return next year. Mountain Collective is splitting Snowbird and Alta into two separate resorts for their pass, which means we can ski two days for free at each one now instead of two days jointly between those ski areas!

In the depths of winter,

I finally learned that within me

there lay an invincible summer.

-Albert Camus