the promised land - part 1

 


Utah was amazing. We spent three days skiing and one day exploring. The focus of this post will be on the skiing, and it'll be mostly pictures. After all, how many times can I say "the skiing was fantastic." Well, that's one time so far I guess. It really was. The snow was...snow...not ice. The mountains were tall and steep. The skiers and snowboarders were in control, all of them. Any one of those factors would have been great, but combined they were remarkable to an east-coaster like myself. Maybe I'll research job opportunities in Utah.

I forgot the camera the first day, but here I am the second day on the mountain at Alta. No goggles yet, but I'm wearing the wonderful rental boots that inspired me to drag Aaron all over the city later that night in search of a pair of my own. Since I've already forced many people to listen to a long boring story of the wondrous-ness of those boots, I'll omit it here.

 


The mountains were rugged. This doesn't really do justice to it, but I didn't take a whole lot of pictures at the top (too windy and too interested in skiing) so unfortunately I don't have any pictures of crazy people jumping over rocks. Rest assured, there were crazy people jumping over rocks. There were also tracks that mutely assured me that there were even crazier people there earlier, jumping over even crazier rocks. We rode with a guy who would have been happy to show us how to get there. Um, no thanks!

 


We were really lucky this day because the weather was doing what the locals called an "inversion" which apparently meant that the air layers reversed, trapping smog in the valley and putting warm air up on the mountains. So beautiful! For us anyway. You know, the lucky people on top of the mountain.

 


This is the only shot we got off of the back side of the mountain (towards the city) that day. Over my shoulder, you can see a bit of the Great Salt Lake, as well as Antelope Island, which has a mountain on it that is larger than the largest of the hills around here. Actually, I just made that statistic up on the spot, but I think it's probably true. Everything was on a different order of magnitude out there.

 


The other resort that we visited was Snowbasin, which was really nice. And when I say "really nice", I actually mean "really swanky." In place of a hamburger stand, they had a mountain chalet with chefs in white hats. The instructors knew all kinds of people by their first names. The rental shop people were really happy to help you try several pairs of boots. And when you went to get on the gondola, the lift attendants took your skis for you. That resulted in a brief tug-of-war the first time, as you might imagine. I was really confused as to why the ski patrol was confiscating my skis. Sigh. One of my favorite things about Snowbasin was eating lunch on top of the mountain. At close to 10,000 feet, it was possible to get out of breath doing strenuous things like, say, getting up to get another cookie, but it was well worth it. The cookie, I mean.

This picture shows Aaron thanking his boss for sending him to Utah, but mostly shows the view out the window. What a great place to eat. (No, nobody minded Aaron being on his cell phone. Sadly, all too many people were calling the office on the gondola. Then again, maybe they owned the office, who knows?)

 


Finally, the only picture we have of the two of us together. We kinda liked the moose for some reason. Oh, and I'm wearing my new pink goggles. Because pink is SO my color. Actually, the goggles and I were virtually inseparable. I was possibly wearing them on the highway. And possibly wearing them in the hotel lobby. And possibly considered wearing them on the plane. (I settled for putting them in my carry-on.)

 


More tomorrow - pictures of antelope island, home of the friendliest mule deer ever, plenty of bison butts (they were shy), and no antelope at all as far as we could tell.