Waking up in the morning to a ski report of 12 inches of fresh snow gets the blood flowing immediately. First of all, however, you must dig your car out of the snow! The ski report mentioned that there had been a reasonable amount of moisture content in the snow, so I knew straight away that the top of the mountain was going to be better than mid mountain. I selected to take my Volkl Katana V-Werks powder skis today as I when you are skiing powder you need something wider under foot. This helps you float on top of the powder and provides the most amazing feeling. Arriving at the resort car park, I realized that today was going to be incredibly busy. The car park was already full at 9AM. As always on a powder day, the tram line at JHMR is long. I decided to bypass the tram and head up the gondola, expecting to be able to make my way across the mountain once I got up higher. I was looking to ski the Alta chutes under the Sublette chair. The Alta chutes are a set of 3 double black runs that are directly underneath the Sublette chair. The access to them is pretty easy and I am a big fan of the terrain near Alta 3. The trees are wider and the slope is consistently steep. I expected these chutes to have received a decent amount of snow and considering they are north facing, they don’t receive a lot of sun, so the snow underneath the fresh powder will be softer. Another factor to consider is the direction the wind has been blowing – if it has been blowing against the hill, it will result in denser powder so I was hoping that the wind had been coming from the south. After skiing down from the gondola I started to get a little worried about the snow quality as my skis were sticking a little bit and the snow was pretty heavy. Heading over to the thunder chair, I realized that the lift line had also preceded me! It was busy. After finally getting on the thunder chair I decided to ski a chute down into Laramie Bowl. The entrance was pretty cut up but I managed to find some powder turns on the left side of the chute. Unfortunately I triggered a small snow slide and rather than let it knock me over, I decided to straight line the rest of the chute. Skiing heavy powder fast is very very tiring on the quadriceps muscle as there is a lot of resistance coming from the powder and you are constantly fighting to stay upright. After this, my legs were burning a little so I took it easy down the groomer. The lift line at Sublette was also long, but I managed to bypass it pretty quickly with the singles line. Pro Tip: if you ever want to get up the chair fast when there are a lot of people, take the singles line. You are guaranteed to get up much faster. At the top of Sublette I skied down toward the alta chutes this requires some traversing, some rock hopping and a good bit of sliding. Alta 1 was closed due to avalanche danger and due to the slide I had already started I knew this was for good reason. If Alta 1 slides, it could carry you off of a cliff. I traversed across to alta 3 and enjoyed some nice turns although it had already been quite tracked out. I skied the Alta 3 chutes and surrounding area for a few more runs until I had enough of the heavy snow and no fresh tracks and decided to head down into Rawlins bowl. I can usually find fresh tracks in this area, so its often my goto place when everything else has been tracked. Today however, this was a bit of a mistake! I scored some lovely fresh tracks at the top of Rawlins bowl, through the trees and thoroughly enjoyed. However, at the bottom, the snow got so heavy and water laden that my skis were barely moving. Very difficult skiing indeed. As it was now past midday and I didn’t fancy waiting in the lift lines again, I decided to call it a day.
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MahimaNuclear Engineer, Product and Strategy expert, Vegetarian, Adventurer. Categories
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December 2019
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