Living The Wasatch Dream

One of my main goals of this trip was to 'chase the snow.' So of course Mason and I left Taos Thursday after skiing and drove 12 hours through the night and a snow storm to make it to Salt Lake City, UT. We arrived at 4am but couldn't make it up the road to Alta or Snowbird due to avalanche control. Luckily we were planning to live out of the truck anyway so we stopped at a park in and hopped in the bed for a few hours of rest. The road was set to open at 8 so we got in line at 7:30. The road actually opened at about 9:30 and it took over an hour more to get up to Alta. Due to the closed road, nobody could get up to the resorts including the staff. Fortunately for us, that meant the resort didn't open until about 10:45 anyway so we didn't miss any first tracks.

When we finally got on the snow we were surprised with how dense it was. While 26 inches of snow had fallen, it felt more like 15. Still, a 15" snow day is fantastic when you're from Minnesota the last time I was at Alta I was 8 years old so essentially neither of us knew what or where to ski when we got there. We started at the wild cat lift which services mostly black glades. The locals kept mentioning the "High T" or high traverse so we followed them there and skied that most of the day. It was a long traverse that gave you access to three faces of a black/double black mountain. After our long day on the hill we found $10 pitchers of PBR in the Gold Miners Daughter cafe located at the Wild Cat Base. We rounded off the night with some great BBQ at R&R BBQ in South Jordan.

Because we liked Alta so much, we went back on Saturday. Unfortunately for us, the lines were even longer than Friday. The snow was great though, more fell overnight and more terrain was opened up. Up on the High T, mason decided it would be a grand idea to climb up on a log and jump off.

Later on, Mason found an even bigger stump and convinced me it would be a good idea to get up on it and jump off too. Some guy told me to 'just send it' so I did and Mason didn't have the video rolling... So I had to go back up and do it again... We again followed our previous routine and ended the day with a pitcher of PBR. That night we found a little mexican place called the Lone Star Taqueria where we ate a couple too many street tacos.

For the last couple days we had been living out of the truck at a secluded park in Cottonwood Heights. We made friends with the locals walking their dogs while making breakfast. I was surprised just how supportive everyone we talked to was about us camping in a residential park parking lot.

Skiing that day took place at Snowbird. Mason and I got in different lines for the Aerial Tram and I ended up waiting a half hour longer than him to get on it. We went over to Mineral Basin, skied the worst snow yet this trip, and then had to wait in line for over a half hour just to get out of that side of the mountain. On the other hand, the best snow of the day was off the Little Cloud lift. We must've skied that lift over 10 times throughout the course of the day. Even though we didn't ski at Alta, we ended up back there for our daily pitcher of PBR. We were both craving asain food so we ended up at the most upscale Chinese restaurant I had ever been to. The walnut shrimp was great, the seasame chicken was really good but not on Yang's (Woodbury, MN) level.

Sunday night was a short night of sleep for more than 1 reason. First, we played cribbage a little longer than we should've. Second we were woken up by the Cottonwood Heights PD at 4:30am. Third, it was supposed to absolutely dump snow in the morning and all day so we were going to get in line early. Back to the police, we got an unexpected window knocking. The cops were really nice though. They told us it was against the city policies to camp within the city. Fortunately since we were up to no trouble, could prove we weren't homeless, and had no warrants out for our arrest we were aloud to stay the rest of the night. They even said we could come back but would probably have to deal with a middle of the night investigation again.

We ended up sleeping through out alarms and didn't get in line till about 8am. After waiting in line for 3 hours we found out the resort was going to shut down and no traffic would be allowed. It had snowed about 18 inches in a matter of 6 hours. Being Masons last day, we couldn't just give up. So we watched a movie in the truck until we were sure the mountain was not opening. Fortunately there was enough snow in the streets to ski behind the truck. I took mason up and down a side road until the plows came and ruined our fun...

On Tuesday, Mason was packed up and off to the Airport bright and early. It was a fun 3 weeks with him that I'm sure will never be forgotten. Before leaving we had a little walmart parking lot ski tuning session. Because where else are ski bums supposed to tune skis?