ALTA, UT — This winter has been strange. A few storms have passed through that dumped the same amount of snow (or more) in the valleys as they did in the mountains. That phenomenon is not typical. This latest storm followed that trend. The valley got about six inches overnight, and Alta got about the same.
After a very long bus ride up the canyon, Dan and I finally got skiing at around 10:45 AM. The new snow was very light, but not plentiful enough to hide the crusty snow beneath.
After a few warm-up runs off Sunnyside, Dan and I ventured to Catherine's Area via the Supreme Lift. Unfortunately, there were few fresh spots, despite my investigation of several different gullies. We then decided to traverse around to the west face of Patsy Marley.
We started our traverse fairly low, and I really hadn't picked out any landmarks to guide my decisionmaking once we were there, so I wasn't sure when to drop in. The spot we ended up skiing was a bit flatter than I had hoped, but there was plenty of untracked snow. The snow wasn't very deep, but it was a great run.
After lunch, we headed up Sugarloaf to ski Greeley. I didn't ski the Yellow Trail area very well, but after traversing around the bend into East Greeley, I skied a great run down to the bench. The soft crud conditions were great.
That was the last great skiing of the day for me. It took me forever to ski the rest of the run. I'm just not in good enough shape. I get to the point where my legs are so tired that I'm not confident I can stay in control for long stretches of skiing, so I scrub speed and stop frequently, which is, ironically, probably more tiring than just skiing normally.
In any case, after that run, I skied about a half dozen Sunnyside cruiser laps while Dan took another run off Supreme. I then met back up with him for a run down from Sugarloaf. Dan then took one last run while I headed back down to the lodge.
My lack of fitness is frustrating because I just want to ski like I did when I was in better shape, but I just physically cannot ski that way for long periods of time. Everyday I go skiing though, I get closer to be being "back". On this day, at least, I had a great time anyway.
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