Snow conditions weren’t perfect, and it was a far cry from the chest deep, 30-something inches that blew the minds of anyone who touched Alta’s slopes in October last year, but my first ski day for the 2011/2012 ski season was fun nonetheless. It was a party atmosphere on November 6th as skiers and snowboarders swarmed the cut runs beneath the Collins lift as diehards came out of the woodwork, clearly ready for winter to begin.
It sure felt like winter as the mountains have their covering of white which will remain for the next six months, and morning temperatures at the base hovered around 11 degrees. A slow trickle of boot packers and skinning backcountry tour parties hoofed up the Corkscrew run through clouds of snow raining down in a blizzard from snow guns.
Mason and I skinned to the top of the Collins Lift where we escaped the bulk of the crowd that gravitated to Baldy Shoulder. There, we gave an offering to Ullr for increased snowfall in the form of Johnny Walker scotch sacrificed from a metal flask poured onto snow and frozen rock, then de-skinned for a questionable descent.
Rocks were a major concern, and for good reason. Only 9 inches fell at Alta since the big storm in October, most of which melted during the Indian Summer of the past few weeks. Undeterred, we skied anyway. I brought my rock skis in anticipation of a bang-up session on sharp stone. Unfortunately Mason doesn’t have an old setup to bear the brunt of rocky trauma, so our lines had to be carefully chosen. This also meant I had to ski first and seek out any landmines that may scar the bases of Mason’s only pair of touring skis. Fortunately, our first run went without incident, as any hard surface our skis sunk down to was surely the frozen ground and not granite… we think.
At the bottom, just above the mid-station of the Collins Lift, we slapped skins back on skis and ascended to the Baldy Shoulder, joining the throng of whooping skiers shredding the chutes and aprons of Aggie’s Alley. Rocks were even more a concern here, but brave guinea pigs assured us that wind-blown snow buried the chutes in waist-deep fluff and nary a rock was discovered. So we gave in and skied the best run of the day through powder deep enough to bestow even a few face shots.
But below the chute, sinister rocks indeed lurked, and my uphill ski landed on one with such force that I stopped in my tracks, resulting in a spectacular face plant. I ejected, and hiking back up to my lost ski, I saw with delight that it was still sitting atop the rock that threw me out like a bouncer at a dive bar. The best part is that despite the velocity and violence of the rock induced crash, my ski base was no worse for wear as only a small curl of black proved any damage.
Game for one more run, we followed the cat track to the top of the Wildcat Lift where the view below looked like a neon-clad pioneer wagon trail as Alta’s finest dirtbags trudged up the skintrack, laboring uphill in below-freezing temperatures for a little bit of sub-standard turns. But this is the course of fall skiing – as the drought of skiing”s fix leads to a foaming-at-the-mouth for anything white and cold, no matter how shallow or rotten.
Our third run was the rockiest. Every turn was cringe worthy. Every weighting of a ski tail resulted in a hammering or scraping. Exiting onto the packed run, we wove in and out of uphill traffic on slippery man-made snow back to the car for our traditional beer-on-a-tailgate post-ski relaxo. As we drank cold pale ales, the bask of sun, snow and mountains, coupled with the vibration of worked leg muscles, told us that ski season has begun.