I love surprises. I especially love surprises when it comes to skiing powder. The weekend of January 21st, 2017 has gone down as among the best powder skiing I’ve ever experienced in my life… definitely the best I’ve had since skiing at Alta.
It all began with the forecast on Friday night. Only 4-6 inches were expected in the upper Cottonwood Canyons. My buddy Mason and I planned to backcountry ski, so we got up early and met at the Little Cottonwood Canyon park and ride at 8 a.m. But low visibility and falling snow made me look at Alta’s overnight totals and to my astonishment, the snow stake at Collins read 14 inches. To Alta we went.
The canyon road was slick and a few Subarus ahead of us were fishtailing a lot. My Toyota truck got in on the action with a few icy corners but we made it to Alta without any issues. But when pulling into the Wildcat lot, I was appalled at how empty it was. Nine o’ clock on a powder day and the lot was only a quarter full. There were not lift lines. Alta was almost a ghost town. Where was everybody?
We rode the Wildcat chair up for the first run and headed directly to Westward Ho. Dropping in on my first turn, I buried myself in snow. Fourteen inches was the overnight total, but this seemed more like two feet! And the snow was still coming down in fat flakes and no wind.
Over and over we lapped Westward Ho, finding fresh lines on every run. The place was not getting tracked out at all. Each turn resulted in face shots, or even better, waves of snow that billowed over our heads to the point that we could not see where we were going. UDOT closed the highway from 2-3:30 for avalanche control. And still the snow kept coming down.
The crowds didn’t show up until between 1 and 2 p.m. Turns out a few doofuses in 2wd cars got stuck on the highway near the mouth of LCC and seriously gummed up the works. Friends of mine trying to get up-canyon said it took them 4 hours to drive from 9400 South in Sandy to Alta. Mason and I were very lucky to have gotten ahead of that mess, because for the first 5 hours of the day, we had Alta practically all to ourselves.
The storm total ended up being 36 inches at Alta! It was certainly one of the deepest days in recent memory, but it was likely the best powder day of my life because there was nobody there. I learned a lesson that day: always get to Alta early on a powder day, because you never know what might delay the canyon, leaving you stranded in the valley.
After this unexpected and epic storm, I’m happy to report there is more coming. The forecast looks like 8-12 inches on Monday, January 23rd, and a line of smaller storms most of the week to top it off. It’s been an incredible season already with Alta reporting a 103-inch base and a 262-inch season total thus far, which is a lot for late January.
For more photos from Alta’s huge storm, or to get discounted online tickets, go to alta.com