Posts Tagged PC
Opening Day Video From PCMR
I love Opening Day. Saturday, November 20th was the first day of the ski season here for us Park City folks. I made a few runs with some staffers from the mountain who were happy to get the season rockin’.
It felt good to be back on the snow, and I was amazed how good the conditions were for the first day of the season. The weather was a mixed bag; a little bit of snow, a lot of wind. As the day went on, the cold front moved in, and by evening, we had a full-on blizzard on our hands. Forget about a white Christmas, we’re going to have a white-out Thanksgiving. Looking forward to some powder turns on Thanksgiving day. Be thankful for what we got.
Favorite Park City Holiday: Halloween
Posted by admin in Events, Skids Eats on November 5th, 2010
I’m a transitions guy. I like the space in between one thing and another. Nothing exemplifies this more than my love for the fall in the mountains. If you are resourceful, you can start the ski season while others are still biking, and keep biking when others start skiing. Sounds kind weird, but it always made sense to me, that’s why I moved here. Which leads to my favorite holiday, Halloween. With a young child, we are veterans of doing the Main Street stroll on Halloween. You see so many familiar faces in one place, but sometimes you have to try hard to recognize folks, because the costumes can often be that good. I have a friend and fellow Skid who went as a Horse’s Ass one year. No idea how he got the other person to be the front of the horse. It sort of worked well for him, though. The highlight of this year was the mad frenzy to get to Grappa while they were handing out larger than life Billy Wonka bars. Inside was a real Golden Ticket, a gift card good at the restaurant for Mom and Dad. Here are a few photos to give you a flavoring of what it was like up on Historic Main Street.
The view from the top of Main Street on Halloween.
The Mad Hatter, Halloween 2010
Hellboy in the house.
The witch and the PC Miner, Halloween 2010.
Sasquatch on Main Street Park City, Halloween 2010
Taking a candy break, Park City Halloween 2010.
Bag The Crest Now Or Wait Until Next July
Posted by admin in Bike Skids on September 9th, 2010
So there I was, heading into Labor Day weekend, and I had yet to bag the Wasatch Crest trail for the the 2010 season. A few reasons conspired to keeping me at lower elevations throughout the summer. A resurgent love for the road bike (getting a new Specialized Tarmac SL3 kindled that fire), the long recovery from a sprained ankle, a ho-hum attitude towards my current mountain bike. I got a call from a neighbor who was heading up to bag the Crest the day after the PCP2P race (Park City Point-to-Point), and I thought to myself that I’d rather rub poo in my hair than ride up chewed and spit out single track after hundreds of riders skidded around and left their GU packets all over the trail. But I went. The trails were in great shape, and I don’t think I saw a single discarded GU packet from Spiro to Mid-Mountain. There was a chill in the wind that reminded me summer was close to being done. When we climbed past the Jupiter chairlift on the way to Shadow Lake, I started to think about the coming ski season. The terrain always looks so different up there. Hard to imagine Shadow Lake all filled in with snow, but it’s only a few months away. The climb up Mofo Hill was not as hard as I remembered, but the air was cold at the top and sliced right through my jersey, reminding me that indeed, I did break a sweat on the way up. We scooted past a group of freeriders all padded up like Mad Max post-apocalypse trail bandits, and the single track was as good as it always is. Not sure I’ll get it again this fall, but if you have a chance in the next week or so, you should try. Next July is a long way from now.
Soon Shadow Lake will fill in with snow, but right now it's a peaceful spot to stop for a Cliff Bar.
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
Missing Park City Bigtime
I’m out here is Keystone, Colorado attending the MTS conference. Our posse skied Keystone Resort today, producing a very different vibe from what we are used to back home in Utah. We ate lunch in a local coffee shop/sandwich shop/full bar. Killer selection of single-malt whiskeys. This provided me with a sense of mountain culture shock, since you wouldn’t see a bar like that in Utah. The skiing at Keystone was pretty good, and once you got up into the upper reaches of the resort, you felt like you were really in the mountains. I’d say the base depth here is about half of what we currently have in Park City. The resorts here along the I-70 corridor rise up from the freeway like roadside attractions. I had an argument about this with a Utah native. On the one hand, it’s kind of lame when you see a sign for a resort town that says “Vail: next 3 exits.” Exits and onramps don’t really drive home the mountain town feeling. Slopeside lodging here means you are at the base, but you are a stone’s throw from the freeway. Good thing or bad thing? It certainly is impressive when driving by to see lifts and runs right there, whereas in Utah, at least the Cottonwood resorts are tucked away, up long and windy canyons. No eye candy. Meanwhile, back home in PC, it’s dumping lions and wolves, and all of my Skids correspondents are killing me with reports of 9″ here, 10″ there. We’ll ski Breck tomorrow and maybe Copper on Friday, then we’ll be Utah bound.