The last two nights have been good ones to have been staying on the other side of parking lot from Snowbird - really all five nights have been so great that I have to consider buying into Iron Blosam so I can have my own unit and bring my wife to the party that Tony Crocker, his wife and 30+ friends put on during week 10.
I did not get out until 9:15 and after pulling my skis out of my SUV that was driven and snow-free on Tues, I put them on and skied down the driveway, then down three? short fight of stairs and crossed the road and skied down to Wilbere. The stairs had only been cleared on one side and I had no grinding on them or crossing the road where snow was dirty, but coverage was OK. Wilbere stopped twice, with the second one kind of long. It also was stopped when I rode it later to avoid slog (due to new snow) back to Gad 2 when employee apparently misloaded. I saw him climbing back up to re-load.
Snow early was too dry and not usually deep enough to avoid hitting bottom, but was still fun. Wind was howling at top of Little Cloud which along with drifts made it hard to stay on traverse to Regulator. But LC along with the tram ran all day. In this picture taken before 10, it looked like sun was going to come out, but it never did.
Mineral never opened and Peruvian was delayed. Even without staying on the traverse, it was possible to get to Middle Cirque which I went past and came down Glen's as sub-surface was soft enough that the 8" overnight and 4-6" that fell by 10 AM skied well.
I rode Gad 2 with Bruce from Maine, who has been staying at the Cliff Lodge and skiing everyday that it has been good since early Jan. I told him I didn't really get the point of the lift as it seemed like there were a lot of flats and traverses to get to short and often bumpy, treed and cliffy steeps. He shared with me a place he'd found where steep and mostly untracked was long and he also had some good ways to go the rest of the way down. After doing that twice, we went up Little Cloud and skied steep and deep South Chute to the tram.
We had a two tram wait, then skied down the Cirque Traverse to Barry Barry Steep which was OK although some of it probably slid so we skied shots next to it. He went back to the Cliff to see if his wife was ready to go out and I rode Gadzoom and Gad 2, then joined small group from Iron Blossom at mid-Gad for lunch.
After lunch, lizardqueen led us down Gad 2 to lookers right of the chair (first time I went that way this trip) and went into trees past Bananas where after nearly getting cliffed out, some of us found some deep untracked just past the ropeline. We skied to Baby Thunder which we rode a few times as everyone was enjoying the low-angle deep and very dry new snow there. I gave some powder tips and tree-well warnings to the group that including father and son from New Jersey who had just arrived the previous night and had never skied powder.
I left the group about 3 and got two rides on Little Cloud where wind seemed to be even worse, dropping into mid-Cirque on second lap about 3:30. I had time for a Peruvian lap and one on Wilbere before quitting after 4:30 with over 31K vertical. Some of the 30 year-olds in our group had 36K. Both are huge numbers, considering that most of it was in powder.
They are now reporting 30" for storm and we are Interlodged.