Terrain pushed out!
I went to bed pretty early last night and had no problem getting up early this morning. I picked Travis up at 7:30 and we headed up the hill. We encountered light traffic and made it to the bypass a bit after 8. There was a fairly big ticket line when we joined the tram line at 8:20. The ticket windows don't open till 8:30, a cruel trick to those who need tickets and still want first tram. (On powder days, today it wasn't an issue) The pressure for first tram was pretty light today, we were three rows back getting there when we did.
We got to the line at 8:20 and lifted off promptly at 9:00, but I"m pretty sure we stood there for two hours. I always maintain the slowest time can go is when waiting for first tram or first chair. There were two guys together in the row ahead of us. Guy #1 is standing there holding his skis. Guy #2 is standing there holding his skis upside down and all four of their poles. They stand this way for 10-15 minutes. Guy #1 says, "Hey, hold these." and hands his skis to Guy #2 who is now holding two pairs of skis and four poles. Guy #1 proceeds to stand there chilling for 10 minutes until line starts moving to load when he retakes his skis from Guy #2 who dutifully held them the entire time.
Snowbird received about 11 inches Thursday night into Friday, the snow report on Friday showed Powder Paradise hadn't opened. That was my plan this morning, it was dashed when I got to the top and asked a host who told me he thought it'd opened yesterday. We headed out there first thing and sure enough, it was tracked out. The light was pretty flat back in Mineral, the cat track was hard to discern. We went all the way out to the Bookends/Hillary ropeline. We were hoping to find a tongue of wind buff but didn't find anything resembling it. The snow out there was still quite soft and even though tracked still skied very well. It skied so well we hit up a Baldy lap and skied the groomers coming down from there. There wasn't a hint of hardness, it was silky smooth and you could open it up a bit.
We headed back up to the top and went down the frontside. At the bottom of Zoom the board showed the Road to Provo as open. Zoomer to Little Cloud and we were heading out there for the first time this season. Quite crazy considering it's almost February. They hadn't been able to run a groomer out the traverse so it was a bit sporty, most folks were pretty civil though and it was orderly. Of course we went all the way out, Travis set the track past Bonar's, I hit up the depression just before that. It took a bit of rock/scree crossing to get there but that kept the snow from being plundered by the initial crowds. There were plenty of sharks out there, I'm sure there's gonna be a bit of base welding done by participants out there. If you knew how to read terrain and have a quick eye it was ok, I didn't hit but a few small touches. But, we saw a lot of folks get taken out by rock hits.
We bypassed the Little Cloud line and headed down to Gad 2 hoping to find the upper Bassackwards gate open. Sure enough, it had opened. I've got a favorite spot there that is signed as a cliff area, it tends to keep folks from dropping. We hit that up and sure enough were the first people down and didn't touch a thing. Soft, soft turns.
Around noon we were headed up the tram and saw a few tracks on Cheater Baldy. We didn't see but a few folks on the traverse and were hopeful by the time we could get there we'd still find unmolested snow. The traverse over there was a bit beat out in spots but sure enough by the time we got there we were able to traverse far enough out into Palm Springs and get some tasty lines. After getting skunked on rope drops last weekend it was nice to be back like that bum on a bologna sandwich thing again.
We skied till a bit after 1:00, it looked like they were working the Bookends pretty hard, even though the trail report shows they didn't open I'd bet they did. High Baldy and Tiger Tail/Thunder are about the only areas still closed. Baby Thunder opened the other day, letting them claim 11 of 11 lifts open.
"Can you hold my shred sticks while I chill? Thanks."