Utah backcountry skiers are chomping at the bit. Before ski resorts open, most skin up Alta and Snowbird to get pre-season turns. But with Alta shutting off all uphill traffic on Sunday for opening-day preparations, the bounty of in-bounds skiing and riding was shut off. With a big storm that dropped over a foot of…
Tag: Alta
Video: Pre-Halloween Powder at Alta
For most in Utah, ski season is a few weeks away, but for a dedicated few, skiing and snowboarding started a while ago. Alta has been hammered by early-season storms, and quite the base is building up for the 2013/14 ski season. As ski bums are wont to do, they’ve been touring up on low-angle…
Video: Dub Roots from Dubsatch Collective
Nothing gets skiers jazzed up for ski season more than over-the-head powder footage. In this week’s featured video, the new short film “Dub Roots” by the Dubsatch Collective, there’s plenty of it, and they even keep it mellow with one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs. The video is shot entirely at Alta. It’s basically…
Superior hiking in Little Cottonwood Canyon
For me, no other roadside attraction in Utah provides the aesthetic allure of Mt. Superior. Its enormous concave face lets the imagination run wild, and even in the fall, with not (just yet) a speck of snow on the ground, it’s easy to mind-rip big turns all over its intricate structure and terrain diversity. The…
Eric Ghanem skis Gunsight at Alta in September
It’s crazy. A very, very early winter storm dumped 6 inches of snow on Alta, and insane skiers thought that was enough to drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon and make some turns. One of those skiers, our good friend Eric Ghanem, even went so far as to ski Gunsight. A bunch of that new snow…
Videos: Alta Love Compilation
Mornings are cold all of a sudden here in Utah, and Alta recently posted a picture of frost covering everything up at 8,000 feet. It may be September, but winter is making herself known already. So for this week’s featured video, we’re showing three ski-related edits, and they all come from Alta. The first one,…
Cecret Lake – the everyone trail
The pinnacle of unextreme hiking takes place in the heart of Alta, and I quite enjoyed it. You don’t have to sacrifice any of your grizzled nature to enjoy such an outing. It doesn’t put an asterisk on your trans-Wasatch, Tri Canyon ski-running feats to admit to a relaxed stroll in the woods. We have,…
Ski more resorts with Alta, Snowbird, PCMR, and Deer Valley season passes
It’s a good time to be a skier in the Wasatch! Skiers and snowboarders will have more season pass options than ever before this winter with new season pass offerings that seem to be falling from the sky like snow. A great example is that Alta, Snowbird, PCMR, and Deer Valley recently announced if you…
Running from Alta to Baldy and back
On a recent, roasting Friday night, I escaped the triple-digit valley life to tag along with trail runners Chris Cawley and Heather Kluk on a challenging loop run beginning in Alta. Beginning just before seven in the relative cool of 8,500 feet, we passed the bottom of Wildcat chair and cut west on the trail…
July 4th in Alta: America and coreshots
The 4th is glorious, and it is great. But it’s also sweaty and crowded. Sometimes jamming into a public arena with half the valley to swap “oohs and aahs” over exploding ordinances as the temps just drop below 90 is less than attractive. Whiny me. So this year on the 4th, as they often do,…