Opening Day '08-09

Believe it or not, the wait is over. As of October 5th the ski season has officially begun. No, there won't be constant skiing until about the end of November/early December, but the sporadic storms have begun their march.

Yesterdays forecast was a little, um, optimistic. 18-24 inches? No, not so much. At the parking lot at Alta at 9300 feet it looked like this.



Still gorgeous though. But boy was I happy to get snowed on. My roommate and I headed up to Alta because we knew it would be the best bet for getting some turns in because it's at a higher elevation than most other Utah resorts. We met this nice guy in the parking lot named Porter who toured with us for a little bit as we headed uphill in search of grassy slopes and the hope that the snow would be enough for some turns. I figured if nothing else, it would be a great little training hike. Who doesn't love hiking in the snow? Well, a lot of people, but I'm not one of them.

We weaved our way through quite a few treed and rocky areas with just barely enough snow to skin up, but certainly not enough to ski down. Here's Chris, my roommate, skinning up.



Chris and I.



After seeing nothing too promising we decided we'd head back down. We saw what looked to be a road that might just have enough snow to eak out a few turns on the way down. Yet, to our great surprise, on our way over to the road we came across a wonderfully open, grassy slope with about 8-10 inches of snow on it. As we'd already begun descending we decided to just boot up the hill for a bit instead of skinning. The higher we got the more promising it looked. I knew at this point, that we were going to get some bonafide turns. October 5th baby! That's one day earlier than last years opening day of October 6th. Here's Chris booting up the last little bit before we strap skis on for some turns.



My trusty rock skis.



Chris starting to head on down.



Me part way down.



Looking back at our tracks. Mine are the ones at center taking the fall line. I had my rock skis, so I didn't mind banging them up a bit. Chris chose to zigzag to save his skis a bit. I definitely hit a lot of rocks. But hey, that's why they're called rock skis!



Me with beautiful Devil's Castle behind.



A look at upper Little Cottonwood Canyon from Alta.



One of my favorite things about this time of year is the contrast between fall colors and winter snows. It was highlighted today by blue skies that came out as we were descending. All in all, a fantastic day. I'm officially stoked for winter.