Archive for category Mountains
From Winter To Summer In a Week
Posted by admin in Bike Skids, Mountains on June 7th, 2010
It’s amazing how quick we go from winter to summer here in the mountains of Park City. Memorial Day weekend was unsettled, with some cold rain and chance of snow. This past weekend hit the 80s and felt like summer. Just like that. There is still plenty of snow up high. I rode my road bike to the top of Bald Mountain Pass in the Uintas, and there were still 4 to 5 foot snow walls, but then again, that was at about 10,795 feet. How about you? Did anyone ride the mountain bike trails here in Park City this weekend? How high up did you get?
Snow Is Back To PC
This morning, May 24th, I woke up to snow covered rooftops in the hood, and a good 4 or 5 inches on the car. The drive up and over Parleys Summit was just like a midwinter commute. UDOT trucks were out plowing the road, semis with their flashers on, single file all the way down to Mountain Dell. Rumor has it, last Saturday was a legit powder day at The Bird, and no doubt today would be great, but they are only open on weekends from here on out. Below is a video from an early April powder day at PCMR, not previously shared for some odd reason.
Powder Easter
Nothing like hiding Easter eggs in the snow for the kids. While they are running around looking for eggs, the avalanche bombs are going off all along the Wasatch Back. 14″ of fresh reported by PCMR this morning, but I wasn’t in line when the ropes dropped for Jupiter. Instead, I kicked back with an extra cup of joe, and let the kids have their fun. I finally made it to the hill with the little girl in tow, just a daddy daughter day at PCMR. No fighting for a parking spot on Easter Sunday. We had our fair share of kiddie pow, and managed to burn through Detonator, my daughter’s favorite run, when it’s not icy. Today it was all filled in with fresh snow, and my little ripper had a blast. We made our way down to the bottom as things were starting to warm up and get heavy, and made a stop for ice cream at Yellow Snow, where my daughter had “Peeps” ice cream. That’s right, ice cream with those little technicolor marshmallow birds mixed in. Happy Easter.
Detonator at Park City Mountain Resort
Truckstop Slackcountry Ski Tour
Well, the crowds arrived for Dead Presidents’ Week, which made it a perfect time to go for a little slackcountry tour. Slackcountry is like backcountry touring, only the goal is to expend as little energy as possible to get to the goods. This video goes out to Chad and Ed, who must have been driving by this shot on the highway one day, and decided it would be a good place to ski. I had to add some Megadeth to spice it up a little. Shot with a GoPro Hero HD, and edited in less than 20 minutes using iMovie.
Backcountry Sledding. Say What???
Posted by Snow Chicken in Mountains on February 10th, 2010
So early last week the wife and I headed out for some “new school” sledding, or what I commonly refer to as backcountry sledding. So what the heck are these sleds? You’ve maybe heard of them referred to as Swiss Bobs. I think we’ve had our arsenal of sleds for about three years now, and I have to be honest, my wife uses them way more than I do – I’d consider her a veteran Bobber. She and her girlfriends typically go a couple times a month.
A Sled is Really all you Need.
Finding optimal locations for Bobbing is the first challenge, the best spots are gully type trails with a good steady decline to them – these things haul a#@ when pointed downhill, so you don’t want it too steep. The other key element would be that you choose a trial that gets good winter use, and single track is always better than wide open. One of the best locations in the Park City area is the Iron Canyon/Mountain Trail. It fits all the above criteria and can be ridden from the top, what I would believe to be at least a 1.5 mile decent. A killer 1.5 miles I might add. If you’ve not tried it, you must.
Snow Chicken in the House!
Posted by Snow Chicken in Mountains on December 27th, 2009
Ahhh yes, what the hell is a Snow Chicken anyway. So I started this marketing advising company, one-man shop, back in July. I was having trouble coming up with a name, I’m out on a mountain bike ride and get accosted by a strange bird. I go home and research said bird to find it is a Ptarmigan, often called Snow Chickens in Europe. The feisty little thing was about as intimidating as a kitten, but its persistence was truly inspiring. All things come together in this story to create Snow Chicken Stategic Mktg Communications. Anyone knowing me and my affinity for snowsports would know I immediately fell for the slang name of the Ptarmigan, and the tenacity the little bird displayed stayed with me for days. And so…Snow Chicken was born with a desire to create big brand voices (the Ptarmigan’s attitude) for company’s not packing huge budgets (the Ptarmigan’s physical stature).
So why do I fall into the “skid” classification? Paramount, I’ve not paid full retail for a mountain toy since I started living in Jackson Hole back in the day, and back in the day was 1993. Additionally, and I feel most importantly, I’ve always put lifestyle in front of career. I mean really, we are only here for a short time, why spend everyday tied to a chair all in the name of a few more bucks? Get out and play for crying out loud, the work will come.
In the name of getting out to play in the snow, I’ve been switching gears to winter sports the last few weeks. Just hung up the cyclocross bike after a cleaning last weekend and then threw a coat of wax on all the skate skis. So here is a piece of “Skid” advice for all Nordic skiers I’d like to give – ski in Round Valley this year. My wife and I deliberated over buying Whitepine Nordic passes this year for quite some time, and please – I’m not trying to take anything away from the Whitepine Nordic Center, they do a great job. Here are three reasons why Round Valley is a solid choice. First of all…it’s free. Second, you can take your dogs (don’t be a poop, pick up your dogs shit). Last, a new Piston-Bully grooming machine was purchased this year – with a little more snow we should see it out on the trails soon. Did I mention Round Valley is a very peaceful place in the winter?
See you in Round Valley.
The Snow Chicken Is Coming
I am happy to announce we will have some new contributors to parkcityskids.com this winter. Introducing the Snow Chicken, AKA Jay Burke (@jride13 on twitter). I was going to introduce him as someone who totally has a grasp on the Skids lifestyle, and really cares about what is important and essential to the core of living in a mountain town and partaking of the bounty of the mountains, but I thought it would be better to have him do that himself. Plus, I need to somehow con him into writing his first post. So check back for the first post by Snow Chicken.
Skids Job Opportunity In Park City
It kind of defeats the purpose, if you are a true Skid, to be looking for a job when you could be unemployed for the winter. The idea of being unemployed with Season Pass already secured is the stuff dreams are made of, harder to actually pull off because of those nagging obligations like rent, car payment, food, ski passes, putting food on the table. So then a true Skid without a winning lottery ticket or a rich uncle who lives in Palm Springs must look for a suitable job that fits their lifestyle. Here is an opportunity you might want to check out: the Marmot Store on Main Street is looking for a responsible full-time employee. If you know retail, can be nice to people that are not always nice to you (think Sundance folks looks for black down puffy jackets in sizes you are sold out of), and have a passion for a legit outdoor bluechip brand like Marmot, you might want to give Eric a call or email and see if you are the right fit for a job this winter. Best way to contact him is 435-655-3032 or ericl@jans.com.
Locals Links
Here are 2 new sites for you to check out: Yellow Snow Ice Cream, and Park City Crash Pads. These are 2 locally-owned Park City businesses, and we want to give them a shout out.
Yellow Snow is an ice cream and coffee house located in Prospector, next to another locals’ fave, Fuego (right next to the old Prospector liquor-teria, which is no longer open to the public, but serves as a booze dispensary for the town’s restaurants). Yellow Snow is open crazy hours, something like 6 am to 11 pm. Kids love the ice cream, it’s all homemade, and they come up with some original flavors.
Park City Crash Pads is a new take on resort property management, started by an industry veteran who lost his job when one of the other outfits in town sucked all the money from their condo owners last season, and then blamed the misfortune on the economy (even though Utah skier visits were down only 3% from the prior year, what the hell). Crash Pads is not the same old same old. Their angle is to take on properties that are “mature”, a nice way of saying older and not Deer Valley, but still cozy, and reinvent the ski trip experience. Their new website tells the story way better than we can here, so check them out. They are also building up a nice little following on Facebook.
Day 1 Is In The Books
What’s up, Skids? Are you ready for the ski season? I am. I didn’t make it to opening day of the season at PCMR on Saturday, but went up on Sunday. Felt good to be back on snow. I took my 5 year old up for her first turns of the season. We parked down in the lower lot, and the little ticket booth was closed. Damn. Didn’t want to hike all the way up to the Plaza to get a free ticket for the little one, that would have been a bad start. The ticket checker folks solved the problem, as a nice young lady named Steph had some tickets with her (they are free for the little ones, under 6, I believe). She even offered to clip off the bouquet of last year’s tickets that were dangling from my daughter’s jacket. It made her smile, and that’s why we do it, isn’t it? The conditions were what you should expect for a pre-Thanksgiving opening, so no complaints. After a few runs on First Time, my daughter was starting to pick up where she left off from last season. Worth it. What about you? Did you get out there this weekend?