Snowbird 3/20/10

I must say everytime I come to Park City, it’s a good time.  From the snowboarding to the nightlife, it’s always up there in top moments of fun trips I’ve taken.  Last night I went to dinner at Deer Valley with Steph and Meisha from PCMR joined us, then out to drinks where we met up with Shane from Siege before calling it a night.  This morning we woke up bright and early to head to Snowbird for a full day of shredding.

This was my first time to Snowbird but it’s been on the list of must-go-to resorts for a while especially on a powder day.  Even on a bluebird day like today I was stoked to get out and enjoy the mountain with some leftover dust on crust action.

Waiting on the tram

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There’s a couple mountains I’ve been to that give you that on top of the world feeling, Blackcomb-Whistler and Alyeska are the ones before that reminded me and now Snowbird.  The view from the tram ride was intense and as soon as we got off, that feeling of being up high with so much terrain and peaks around you is breathtaking.

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Steph and I on top.  Having girl friends to ride with makes snowboarding a lot more fun.  We had a lot of fun with mustaches today on the mountain.

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Despite a sardined pack tram which is the norm, once on top the people spread out quickly and I didn’t encounter too many close moments with skiers/boarders.

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We stayed on the Mineral Basin side and hit up the Baldy lift for some laps most of the morning as the sun helped soften up the snow more.  We found some leftover new snow but most areas were new snow on top of crust so required some crunchy fun turns to enjoy them.  Snowbird is really wide open terrain with limited trees on the Mineral Basin side of the mountain so definitely I can see how on a good powder day you’d want to get up early to get those first turns.

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At the top of Baldy lift is the access to Alta Ski Resort.  Alta is one of three skier only resorts now in the United States.  I still can’t believe skier only resorts are in operation today, we all enjoy snow so I don’t see why there needs to be separation on the mountain.

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Steph getting her riding in

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One of the coolest things ever was getting from the top of the chairlift through a tunnel to the other side of the mountain.  The tunnel had a carpet and played Beatles music.  Unfortunately my music video didn’t come out but we danced the whole time in the tunnel.

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The Freeskiing World Championships were going on at Snowbird today with skiers dropping cliffs and proving their big mountain skills on some really sketchy terrain.  We headed down and sat in the sun with PBR’s to watch the skiers huck themselves into flat, bumpy landings and come out clean.

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Me enjoying the sun and watching the skiers

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We rode all day and ended in the late afternoon so we could head down into town for some burrito action.  The best part about this trip is checking out all these locations and seeing if any of them suit me.