Snowbird Ain't For Snowbirds

Sad news out of Utah:

Heather Gross' powder weekend at Snowbird ski resort ended tragically Sunday afternoon when an in-bounds avalanche on Mount Baldy left the 27-year-old buried for nearly an hour. She was found alive but unconscious by rescuers with a probe. She was in extremely critical condition when she was flown to University Hospital, where she died.

About a decade ago, I made my one and only visit to Snowbird. It's one of the most famous ski resorts in the world and I was excited to go.

I was staying with my friends in Park City. Their son was in town and wanted to go skiing. We hooked up with friends of theirs from Salt Lake City and went to Snowbird. Click on the map to see Park City and the Little (Snowbird/Alta) and Big (Solitude/Brighton) Cottonwood Canyon ski resorts. We drove west down the long, slow grade through the Wasatch mountains on I-80 to Salt Lake City and then south on I-215 to Snowbird.


It was a fiercely cold day. On the way up the lift with Anna, I thought I was going to freeze. The wind was whipping down the mountain and cut through my winter layers like a knife. Anna was in charge since she knew the mountain well and I was tagging along.

We got off the lift and there was only one trail. Ski resorts put up signs at the entrance to all trails so you know the name (to find on your trail map) and the difficulty of what lies ahead. For those of you not familiar with skiing, trail maps show lifts in red; the easy "bunny" slopes are marked in green; the intermediate trails are in blue; and the black designate those for the expert. A "double black diamond" is the most difficult trail on Snowbird.

The trail ahead of me looked pretty level but the sign showed it was a double black diamond. Hmmm. I'm an intermediate skier at best. I hadn't been skiing yet that season so my general plan was to spend the morning on the easy slopes to get my legs and then graduate up to the intermediate trails in the afternoon. I'm self taught, and my momma didn't raise no fool. I have no interest in proving my stupidity manhood by skiing on trails above my skill level. That's how people get hurt and end up with knee reconstruction.

Before I knew it, Anna was off and heading down the trail. I didn't have an option so I followed. It didn't seem too bad, really, until I swooshed around the bend and there were skiers lined up across the trail. I slowed down and approached, taking my spot among them alongside Anna.

They were all looking down the slope in front of them. It was effing steep, cliff-like, and everyone was working on getting a pang of courage to start their descent. Ack!

"Anna," I said, "that is way too steep for me!"

"Oh, it isn't that bad."

She tried to coax me. After about a minute, she'd had enough, and away she went. Shushing down the hill with amazing grace. Come to find out, she was a professional skier for a while. Talk about pissing me off. She knew better. My friend had wrecked her knee up the canyon at Alta about 10 years prior.

I was in a crappy spot. I imagined myself tumbling down the mountain ass over teacup. I couldn't walk down the hill and I couldn't make my way back up the hill. There was only one way down, and that was to ski it. I'm not a religious man, but I found time to pray that day. I took a deep breath and away I went, cutting the edges of my skis deeply on every turn in an effort to keep my speed to a minimum.

That was the first and last run of the day for me. Aside from the pissy mood I found myself in, it was simply too cold to go any more.

On the trail map below (click to enlarge), you can see the avalanche area of Mount Baldy on the upper left. My experience was in Thunder Bowl on the middle right. You can see how it is flat at first and then there is the drop off down to "tiger tail."


So I have bragging rights to say I skied double black diamond at Snowbird. And survived.

UT Trip: Final Odds & Ends

This is the last post about my trip to Utah.

Golf
The golf course by my friends' home is undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation. This hole was nothing but dirt when I arrived. They dug drainage channels, put down barrier material and sand in the traps, contoured the ground, and rolled an enormous amount of sod. Everything but the actual green was finished when I left. The Park City ski resort is in the background.


More Flowers
My friends had oriental poppies in their yard. I'd never seen anything like them. The inside of the flower's cup looked smudged with the black from the center. In CA, we grew a variety that stood about 1' high but these orientals were about 3' tall!


Shabbat
On the Friday evening that I was in Utah, I was invited to join my friends at Shabbat dinner hosted by their friends. I'm pretty anti-organized religion and I probably wouldn't have gone 10 years ago. Maybe I've mellowed; maybe I've grown up.

Shabbat is the weekly day of rest symbolizing the seventh day in Genesis that is a day of celebration as well as one of prayer. It is observed from sundown on Friday until the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact time therefore differs from week to week and from place to place.

It is customary to eat three festive meals on Shabbat. These include dinner on Friday night, lunch on Saturday and another meal later in the afternoon.

Aside from getting to meet a wonderful group of folks, 15 of us in all, I got the chance to observe another family's and culture's rituals.

• After gathering around the table, the hostess recitated kiddush, or "sanctification," over a cup of wine at the beginning of dinner. The wine was passed around the table and those that wished to share took a sip.
• She then made a blessing over two loaves of bread...a braided challah...and that was shared during the meal.
• Next was a charity ritual they called "kvetch" and "kvell". Starting at the left of the host, an ornate "piggy" bank was passed around the table to the guests. Each person expressed aloud a kvetch and/or kvell about what they experienced during the week. At the end of every person's turn, they deposited a dollar bill into the bank (placed by the host on the table at the top of the each guest's plate) before passing it on. Those monies are donated to a local charity.

Then it was on to a delicious dinner full of lively conversation around the table. It reminded me a bit of the Thanksgiving meals we had when I was a child. Only these new friends of mine make it a point to do it every week. I can see where this would be a community building activity. [Note: Neither my friends nor I are Jewish, but we were welcomed without a question or care!]

Architecture
One of my friends is an architect in the area so they took me up into The Canyons to check out one of his sites currently under construction. Many of the bridges and retaining walls that hold up the roadbeds that snake along the sides of the mountains are made of metal cages filled with local reddish-orange Utah sandstone. It made me a little uneasy but I was assured that they were all attached together and then anchored to the mountain.


Not sure if you can tell in the pics below, but the driveway is going to be heated. You can see the tubing in the circular section around the tree ready for a final concrete pour. With feet and feet of snow, it would be impossible to get up to the house in the winter. Even with a plow, the driveway would be a sheet of ice.


I'm pretty sure they said the square footage of the house is ~10,000 sq. ft.
*

Utah Trip: 8,000 Foot Trail & Wildflowers

We started our hike along the Mid Mountain Trail, aka the 8,000 Foot Trail, up in The Canyons ski resort. The trail is shared by mountain bikers and some hikers. I expressed reservations about going because I'm severely allergic to all plants poison — ivy, oak, sumac — having broken out in severe rashes every year of my youth and hospitalized twice. Saying I break out when I see a photo of said plants is just barely a joke.

[The time I looked down and found myself in the middle of a poison oak patch while trying to get the "perfect" shot of a bridge along Highway 1 in Big Sur, CA also came to mind. I raced to a local drug store, stripped to my undies in the parking lot, and washed myself with a prophylaxis and two gallons of water. It worked.]

I was assured that the trail is very wide and I would have no contact with the vegetation. Except that the trail was quite narrow and I was routinely in the bushes and plants to let the bikers go by. These pics are about where the path was at its widest. I didn't get a rash, so all's good!

I brought my camera to take pictures of the view. Imagine my surprise when we found ourselves enjoying some of nature's finest fireworks. The only one I could name was the columbine.


We were huffing and puffing from the exercise and altitude. Then, about 2/3 of the way over, we spotted a sign that gave us hope!


We stopped at the Red Pine Lodge for lunch and the food was really good. The lodge is between a gondola lift from the bottom and two chair lifts that go further to the top in ski season. It took us 50 minutes each way from the car to the lodge.


And we spotted someone's wayward parrot.


Mel, Rick, and I stopped to take a break on our way back and enjoyed the view looking down one of the ski slopes (a black diamond or two, I'm sure) with Kimball Junction far below.


These three pics turned out the best so I've posted them at a larger size. Click to engorge.


I never made it to Thanksgiving Point so this was my flower fix.

Utah Trip: Around Park City

Getting to Park City is pretty easy. Just hop on I-80 East from the SLC airport or downtown SLC, go up over the Wasatch Mountains to Kimball Junction (about 30 minutes), then take the Park City exit and drive about 10 minutes into town.

This pic of Kimball Junction and I-80 (the Four Corners) looking East towards Wyoming is taken from a hiking trail high in The Canyons ski resort.


As you drive in to Park City you can see the Deer Valley and Park City ski resorts (left and right, respectively) directly ahead.


A warm welcome...at least in summer. I can't remember but I suspect it is buried in snow in the winter.


Main Street looking South.


Main Street looking North.


The Egyptian theater holds many of the screenings for the Sundance Film Festival.


These buildings represent the architecture on Main Street.


The Town Lift drops down out of the Park City ski resort to the base of Main Street for easy access.


This moose, done up in couture, was part of an area event. These fundraisers seem to be popular as we had one here in Bennington, VT with moose and Saratoga Springs, NY with horses.


Another mainstay on Main Street is "the guy with the birds." I thought he said this was a falcon but it looks like a hawk to me. He puts on a bird show and he sits on the bench trying to drum up visitors. Part of his spiel is that he's worked on the Harry Potter flicks. Click on the second pic for a bigger view.

Utah Trip: Utah Olympic Park

The ski resorts of Park City (Park City, Deer Valley, and The Canyons) hosted many of the events in the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. This is also where the bobsled/luge and ski jump competitions were held and the current home of the Utah Olympic Park.


These are the Nordic and Freestyle Aerial jumps.


This is the bottom of the bobsled course.


I caught a bunch of youngsters practicing their aerial acrobatics on skis the day I was there. They zoom down on a special ramp, hit the jump, then practice a move before hitting the pool.


This old bobsled is part of the on-site Olympic museum.