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!

Skiing - With the Italianos

A motley crüe.

01/31/13 Thursday

Rich’s cousins Jimmy and Greg came out from New York for some California sunshine and west coast slush.

Nancy and I joined them for some runs on the radical slopes of Northstar.

Unorthodox technique.

Jimmy challenging the mighty bumps on the Backside chairline.

Stylin’.

Greg flashing his World Cup form.

At least four Riches too many.

Wow, are you an instructor?

Checking out Sun Bowl.

02/01/13 Friday

The next day, the cousins + Denise + Kiera came out to Squaw.

Conditions were firm, so we aimed for the southern exposures of Sun Bowl and Tower 16.

Getting rowdy.

Kiera drops into Tower 16.

Denise X—the ‘X’ is for extreme.

Denise takes a sick line.

The view of Squaw Valley from Tower 16.

It’s always fun skiing with Jimmy and Greg—it’s like hanging out with a couple of Rodney Dangerfields.

“Hey, those bumps were rough, rough lemme tell ya …”

Waiting for a broken Backside.

02/03/13 Sunday

One more time at Northstar, this time Michaela came out as well.

Skiing the edge of Rail Splitter.

Kiera leading the way.

Second run.

Cousin Jimmy, followed by Nancy.

It’s like something from a French ski film.

Cousin Greg skiing all casual.

Still coming.

Michaela showing race form.

Finally, end of the line.

Firm conditions again, but if you work the edges there’s some fun to be had.

Skiing - Heavenly

First traverse run, top of the Stagecoach chair, looking down at Carson Valley.

01/17/13 Thursday

I had never skied Heavenly, and it had been at least ten years since Mark and Nancy had skied here, so we drove down for a day of scenic traversing skiing.

On Galaxy, the slowest chair in the universe.

Heavenly is an odd mountain. It has numerous knobs and intervening ridges, so it doesn’t have consistent fall lines.

Also, despite a high point of 10,000’, you never get above tree line.

Checking out the steeps of Killebrew and Mott Canyons.

We spent the day exploring, which meant a lot of skiing traversing, getting lost, and trying to figure out how to get where we wanted to go.

Getting a few turns between traverses.

I can see where Heavenly would be a lot of fun on a powder day in the trees, or if you were skiing with someone who knows the layout.

The lake and Jake’s Peak.

The area where Heavenly excels is scenery, as you have views of all of Lake Tahoe, as well as Carson Valley and the Desolation Wilderness.

The view at 10,000’ of Carson Valley to the east, Job’s Peak and Job’s Sister to the south, and pee stains to the west.

Chingus picks a line.

I think the key to skiing Heavenly is to pick one chair or one area and stick to it, otherwise you spend too much time just getting from area to another.

Denied.

I wanted to ski Gunbarrel, but it was closed due to thin, icy conditions.

It only took about an hour of skiing traversing and riding slow beginner lifts to discover this.

Scraping by.

We finally settled for a few runs in the Penises Pinnacles, a fairly consistent run on scrapy snow.

There’s that lake again.

We were surprised at how little snow there was, especially considering the high elevation.

There was granite sticking up everywhere, so you had to keep a sharp eye out.

Marginal snow in the trees.

The weather was great, no wind and warm enough to be pleasant without changing the snow.

Last run.

We had a good time, despite getting lost occasionally. When we come back we’ll have a better idea of what to traverse ski.

Ski - Mammoth

The view at 10,800’ from the top of Chair 23, with the Minarets and the Matterhorn in the background.

4/13/09 Monday

I got a couple of tickets to Mammoth through work, so Nancy and I headed down for a mini-vacation. We left Truckee at 4:00 in the morning to get there nice and early.

We’d been trying for a few weeks to go, but the weather hadn’t been co-operating with our days off. The weather looked a little iffy for this day, but we were running out of time so we decided to go for it.

Skiing the bumps on the Viva run off of Chair 22.

I thought we were going to get skunked, with the forecast calling for strong winds, cold temps and a chance of showers, but fortunately the winds calmed, it got warm with high clouds, and we lucked into soft snow conditions.

Extreme! NOT!

We skied every chair (except the baby lifts) that was running, and got 26 runs in.

Lounging in front of the Canyon Lodge.

We took an hour for lunch, relaxing in the (almost) spring conditions. At 3:00 some weather came in, blowing and hailing, but by then we were pretty much done anyway.

We spent the night in Mammoth, passing out from tired legs, not enough sleep and too much Mexican food.

Ski - Northstar with Linda & Carly

The view of Squaw Valley from the Challenger run.

4/06/09 Monday

Linda Rich, one of Nancy’s buddies from way, way back, and her daughter Carly came up for a day of skiing at Northstar.

Carly gets some spring snow on Challenger.

There’s only two weeks left in the season, and the weather coming up looks iffy, so it was a good day to get out for some classic Sierra spring skiing.

Linda on the Follow Me run.

This was just the second day skiing this year for Linda.

“Is this where you want me to turn?” said the ski model to the ski photographer.

Nancy was stoked to spend a day ripping with her bros.

Oh-oh. French instructors.

Mark took a break from packing up his belongings to move to SoCal to get a few turns in.

Chingus on Follow Me.

Conformist.

Carly was on her high school snowboard race team last year. She decided to ski today so the rest of us wouldn’t heckle her.

Tree hugger.

Linda surprised herself by skiing all day, despite a bum knee.

One last turn.

A sunny day, soft snow, a big burrito for lunch—can’t beat it.