Utah-Colorado Day 2 - The Canyons

The view from the top of the Ninety-Nine 90 chair.

03/13/14 Thursday

We began our first day on the Epic Pass tour at The Canyons just north of Park City.

Skiing bumps on G Force.

The Canyons has been around since the 60s and used to be called Park City West.

They’ve have had a down snow year, about 70% of normal snowpack, but not nearly as bad as ours.

Skiing Eclipse next to the Sun Peak chair.

It’s called “The Canyons” for a reason. The area is comprised mostly of steep ridges with scrub oak on the southern exposures and evergreens on the northern sides.

Looking for freshies off the Super Condor chair.

Most of the runs consist of either skiing down a ridge or skiing the sides of the ridge down to a long drainage.

Finding a little bit of soft.

It’s a strange topography, completely unlike anywhere I’ve skied before.

Coming out of the Kestrel run.

It has some fun runs, but it’s a little hard getting around, with long runouts out the drainages.

Skiing the aspens at the top of the Dreamcatcher bowl.

The southern part of the ski area towards Park City is more like your average ski area, with bowls and faces.

Skiing past the McMansions along Harmony.

This part also has some funky runs along roads and under bridges past huge empty mansions.

Backcountry tracks above the ski area.

The entire ridgeline above the ski area features bowls and faces for backcountry skiers.

Celebrating the end of our first day of skiing.

Interesting day of skiing. Now we have a long drive to get to Beaver Creek.

Skiing - Kirkwood with Chingus

Nancy in the Norm’s Nose area of the Reut chair.

02/20/14 Thursday

We drove down to Kirkwood with Mark “Chingus” Standen for a very nice day of skiing on actual real snow.

The view to the north from Lookout Vista with Caples Lake in the background.

Kirkwood had virtually no snow until these last storms, but due to their high base they got all snow when Tahoe was getting mostly rain.

Looking back toward The Cirque.

Kirkwood is a funky ski area. It has lots of slow chairs, an amazing face called “The Cirque” that is always closed, and more gullies than you can imagine.

Skiing the Covered Wagon area off of the Sunrise chair with Round Top (10,381’) in the background.

Dropping in off a cornice past The Sisters in the area of Shaffer’s Chute.

It was so nice to be skiing steep, off-piste winter snow. After half a season of man-made snow on groomers, you kind of forget what it feels like.

Dropping!

On the shoulder of The Cirque.

The Cirque only opens for extreme contests, but you can ski a little bit of the lower shoulders.

Looking back at Sentinel Bowl, Palisades Bowl and the base area.

We made a long traverse to the High Whiskey area. It turned out to be the worst snow of the day.

Oh look, another gully.

On our last run we found a small arch at the top of a gully in the Chamoix area.

Next stop, all-you-can-eat sushi!