We awoke Thursday morning to a world filled with big, fat, wet flakes of snow coming down fast and thick---quite a treat for us Texans! The beautiful bed of spring flowers that we had noticed outside the hotel office the day before looked like this:
The snow was several inches deep on the ground but wasn't sticking to the streets, so driving was not too much of a problem until we got up into Big Cottonwood Canyon, heading for Brighton. Last year when I visited Ellen, I went up to ski at Brighton for one day, and I was eager to take Ben there and show him some of the trails. The road was snow-covered for the last few miles, so we just took it easy in our 4-wheel drive Saturn. We had a fun day on the slopes; it was snowing most of the day, the powder was fantastic, and the lifts were not crowded. We sat down for lunch at a table with two couples from Texas; one of the women actually grew up in Catonsville, MD, where I lived as a child, and she was familiar with my old neighborhood! By the time we got back to the city, all of the morning's snow was melted, and we enjoyed soaking in the hotel's hot tub.
One reason we chose to go to Salt Lake City was the abundance of ski resorts in the area; we wanted to try out different mountains to compare with Beaver Creek, where we've been several times. After scouting out the trail maps and stats on the internet, I had chosen Deer Valley as one of our destinations. It's not too far off the interstate and at a lower elevation than many other ski areas. It's also close to Park City and The Canyons, so the whole area is very touristy. We stopped off in the town for a sandwich and walked around a bit before going up to the ski lifts. There were some trees there with rather odd growths on them---see what you think:
Here's a closer view of one of them. (And I thought a shoe tree was something you put inside a shoe to keep its shape!)
We drove over to Deer Valley and bought our lift tickets for a half-day of skiing. Deer Valley was really different from Brighton. In a word, it was CROWDED. We had to navigate through what seemed like hundreds of little kids in ski-school classes going down every trail. By the time we finally found a couple of less-crowded trails, the lifts offering access to those trails were closing for the day. So, in a nutshell, we got in some skiing, but it was not incredibly satisfying. Back at the hotel, we once again enjoyed a soak in the hot tub.
Saturday (my birthday) was our day to venture farther north; we drove up to Ogden and headed into the mountains in search of Powder Mountain. The road getting up there wasn't bad until the last couple of miles; then it was pretty steep and snow-covered, but our trusty Saturn got us there safely. Powder Mountain is very "old school," a lot less glitzy and glamorous than Deer Valley, but, OH, the SNOW! It was incredible! This is definitely a place we'll be revisiting. Ben was looking at the trail map in the base "lodge," and he struck up a conversation with a lady who seemed to know her way around. It turned out that she was a mountain host who takes people on tours (for $90 a half day), and she offered to show us around, as she had already clocked out for the day since there weren't a lot of customers around. What a treat! She led us all over the THREE mountains that Powder Mountain resort covers, and it was amazing. We would ride up a lift and never see anyone ski down below us. We'd start down a trail and never encounter another skier. We cut fresh tracks in fresh powder that was falling most of the day, and we enjoyed the absolute silence of the snowy landscape. By the time she left us, we had covered more terrain than we ever would have done on our own, and that was only a portion of what was available. You can bet we'll be going back there and staying for more than one day!
Sunday morning found us heading back to Brighton to try out a couple of trails that we'd missed on Thursday. Unfortunately, our bodies are really not conditioned well enough to fully enjoy four straight days of skiing, so we didn't last long. The hot tub was calling, and we had to oblige. Next ski trip we've decided to force ourselves to take the third day off! We had a lovely dinner with Ellen at an Italian restaurant at Trolley Square and prepared for our return home. It snowed overnight, so we left Salt Lake City covered in a beautiful, cottony-looking snow. Can't wait for next year's ski season---we'll be back!
No comments:
Post a Comment