February 24, 2008: Snowbird!
I totally fail to understand why it is that whenever I bother to publish something here, it is about skiing. Just this past summer nine of us had the best road trip ever going from Boulder, Colorado to Las Vegas. I don't know if any other place in the world boasts as many surreally breathtaking views per square mile as Southern Utah does; and collectively, we got a couple thousand pictures of those views. I really wanted to get out a few of the most impressive ones, but I never got around to it.
Last night, I arrived at Snowbird, one of the many ski resorts in the Salt Lake vicinity, except I don't think any other resort in North America gets as much snow as this one (or its neighbor Alta) does.
I didn't even take the camera to the mountain today — it was a really foggy and blizzardy day, especially up top at 11,000 feet. Yet, once I got back to the hotel, I realized I had the urge to write something! I don't know, might be endorphins, or some other chemical, as I'm not sure what exactly the connection between endorphins and an urge to write something might be.
So, here I go with my first impressions.
Best. Skiing. Ever.
Well, not exactly. From my perspective, though, it beats Switzerland, Heavenly, Crested Butte, and likely an awful lot of other popular places.
Here's one thing I realized today: the ski industry hasn't been able to come up with a good measure of how big a resort really is. Yeah, they have acreage, the number of lifts and the number of runs. The thing is, though, you ultimately want to spend your time skiing, as opposed to skiing to the place where you want to be skiing, not to mention riding a lift to the place from where you will be skiing to the place you want to be skiing. Heavenly and 4 VallĂ©es fail badly in that sense. Snowbird — from my perspective — doesn't. As you ski down from the top of most lifts, you have quite a variety of choices with regards to pitch steepness, snow conditions, tree presence or a total lack thereof. Today, I did about 15 runs, perhaps more, I only rode four different lifts, yet I never skied the exact same route, and I don't think I covered half of the lift-serviced terrain on the mountain. And there is also a connection to Alta. S-W-E-E-T.
Snow
I'm not sure why Utahns claim their snow is different from the snow elsewhere in the world. I mean, yeah, I know, it's dry, low-density, probably also low-fat and otherwise kosher. It still skis and looks and feels and behaves and smells and probably tastes like all other snow I have seen.
That said, though, one thing I noticed in the village today is this: it's white. I'm not being sarcastic. The village here is pedestrian. The temperature, apparently, is never high enough in order for the snow to turn into ice. Combined, these two things result in that here, they apparently don't feel the need to spread icemelt or sand on most walkways. So, people walk on the fresh snow, make a path, and the path stays white, as it is nothing but the packed snow. To sum it up in a blunt but descriptive way, the whole village is freaking white and darn beautiful. S-W-E-E-T.
Finally, as a person who has skied 20+ days in New England this year, I can't resist but notice that neither of my skis came in contact with any ice, ALL DAY LONG! S-W-E-E-T.
Pictures
At the top quarter of the mountain I could sometimes barely see the snow in front of me, so no pictures of the Little Cottonwood Canyon yet. Instead I am resorting to publishing a couple shots I made from the plane yesterday as it was flying over Wyoming and Utah:
This one, I believe, is Great Salt Lake (I am not fully sure, though):
I was peacefully skiing to my lunch break down a gentle groomed wide-open trail at the bottom third of the mountain. Suddenly, I realized that the guy behind a big "Powdershots.com" sign in front of me was taking pictures of me. He shouted "Roll 64" as I was passing him, and I realized they photograph people as they ski and then sell them the pictures. The business model is as obvious as it is brilliant, yet I have never seen anybody else doing it on other ski resorts. So, that's what I got from them:
