Today I went skiing with the adult members of my family and we had quite the adventure. We started at Alta and went looking for leftover powder from yesterday. We skied over to the Supreme chairlift only to discover all the new snow had been skied out. We probed along the ski run looking for newly opened gates to see if we might find something fun to ski. All of the gates remained closed because of high avalanche danger and so we stayed on the main run.
Next we headed over to the Sugarloaf chairlift and traversed over to the Collins side of the resort. We had a bit of a hike but made some good turns and found some unskied snow. Unfortunately it was a long way to go for only a few turns. We kept looking. When we got to the bottom of the Collins chairlift the line looked very long compared to the Wildcat lift which only had a few people in it. Not wanting to wait in line, we headed up Wildcat. At the top, we had a decision to make. We could stay at Alta or we could drop into Snowbird via the Keyhole gate. It is this decision where technology could have helped yet we trusted our own intuition. Well I trusted mine and my wife gave me the look that said she didn't.
There are several options for moving between Snowbird and Alta. Before even considering skiing both resorts in the same day you need to have an AltaBird pass. Otherwise you are stuck in one resort or the other. We all had the requisite pass and wanted to take advantage of it. We knew we could use the Keyhole gate to get from Alta to Snowbird. The trick was how to get from Snowbird back to Alta. One option is to take the public bus. That is always the last resort as we came to ski, not ride a bus. There is also the option of dropping into Mineral Basin and taking the Baldy Express chair back to Alta. Unfortunately it is too early in the season and Mineral Basin isn't open yet.
As we sat on the top of the Wildcat chairlift deciding which way to go, we knew we couldn't use Mineral Basin but knew we could use the Armpit gate on Baldy to get from Snowbird to Alta. With that as our plan, we headed to Snowbird. In hindsight, we had all of the tools necessary to augment our decision. We should have pulled out a mobile phone and checked to make sure we could use the Tram to get up to Baldy. Given the tram closure, we could also leverage the Little Cloud chairlift. Furthermore, we could have verified that the ski patrol allowed people to ski on Baldy. Remember that the avalanche danger was high enough at Alta that we couldn't guarantee Baldy would be skiable.
Armed with only the intuition that we would be able to get back to our car at Alta, we headed to Snowbird. We definitely found the fresh powder we wanted. Those turns at the top of Keyhole are the stuff skier's dreams are made of. Then we carefully threaded our way down the narrow chute that gives Keyhole its name. Once on the main runs at Snowbird we headed to the tram so we could get back to Alta. This is where the adventure began.
We got to the tram and found it to be closed. We are not sure we would have known that while still at Alta as the closure seemed to happen as we got there. The reason for the closure was high winds at the top of the mountain. A quick check of the weather on the Snowbird website would have told us that the winds approached the maximum speeds for tram operation and we might be flirting with a closure. We explained our desire to return to Alta in the hopes of a suggestion from the Snowbird staff. I threw out the idea of heading over to Little Cloud and hiking from it to the top of the tram so we could get to Baldy. Chairlifts can run in higher wind speeds than the tram. Unfortunately Little Cloud was temporarily closed because of avalanche activity in the resort.
We saw our options decreasing with every idea but had a few more. Next we headed up the Peruvian chairlift. From there we had 2 options. We could try to make the short hike up a very steep face which would put us on Baldy. The second option was to ski down to the condo complex below and make the mile walk to Alta. I didn't want to wear everyone out and I do enough hiking so I suggested I would make the hike up to Baldy, get to the car, and drive down to pick the rest of the party up at Snowbird. My wife wanted someone else to go with me and so I picked the kid that kept up with me best while hiking earlier in the season. We started the climb and got about a third of the way up before others on the trail told us that ski patrol had just closed Baldy because of avalanche danger.
That left skiing down to the condos and hiking the mile to Alta. We tried to find other ways to get to Alta as we skied down towards the condos but couldn't find one. We pulled off our skis, threw them over our shoulders, and started walking. It didn't take long to find a ski trail. We put our skis back on and skied across the snow. We found another parking area and pulled skis off to walk through before putting our skis on for the last time. We had to skate up a few slight inclines but we made it to Alta and got the car.
We never wanted to take the bus and that turned out to be a blessing. Right now the public transit system in Salt Lake can't find enough drivers and so they have suspended bus service at Snowbird and Alta until later in the month. It turns out, the bus was never an option. Once again, a quick Internet search would have told us that our absolute fail-safe option wasn't an option after all.
Ultimately we had the technology at our fingertips to help us make an informed decision. Knowing the buses were not running might have been enough to keep me from making the wrong decision to head into Snowbird. In the end though, I did get a good story out of the experience. I also hit my step count for the day before noon.
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