RenegadeRick UT 2008

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 11:17 AM

Our 2008 Utah trip was a great success. There was about 4 feet of snow in the week before we got there and probably another 4 feet fell during the week we were there.

On our first day, the skiers went to Deer Valley and the boarders went to Park City.
Park City was fun and Blue did his best to show us the mountain (well all of it that was open anyhow). Since it was our first day at elevation, the plan was to take it easy and just have some fun.

My buddy Andy had some problems getting his free lift ticket since he left his ID in the car he had to run back to get it while Blue and I took a run. Anytime you got off the beaten path you ended up stuck as Blue demonstrates in this photo.

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 11:31 AM

The skier in the picture is some guy who stopped to help Blue get out of the deep stuff. I got us in trouble by the Thaynes lift where we ended up stuck in some bottomless pow. Then we rode a bunch of tiring catwalks to get around the mountain and we ended up totally exhausted after only a few hours. Blue took us to a local Mexican joint and we had some beers and some interesting salsas. It was cool.

Afterwards we were off to our hotel in Layton and to enjoy a peaceful slumber.

The next day we went to Snowbasin. I'll tell you more soon.

SkaredShtles · 02-11-2008, 03:12 PM

MORE!! MORE!!!

Especially pictures of snowboarders mired in deep pow. That never ceases to amuse me!

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 06:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SkaredShtles

MORE!! MORE!!!

Especially pictures of snowboarders mired in deep pow. That never ceases to amuse me!

Well while I did get stuck in the pow once or twice at Snowbasin (mainly due to the nose of my board diving under the snow and then cartwheeling over on my face), I don't have any pictures of it. What I do have is a picture of a snowMILF to share with you.

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 06:54 PM

How, you may ask, is this related? Well see what happened was:

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 07:02 PM

So she got her subie stuck in a snowbank. How did I end up with a picture of this? Well, what happened was instead of following the directions on the Snowbasin trail map, my buddies said that they got directions from the hotel front desk. So I got this printout of mapquest directions and we followed them to the letter. They ended up taking us into a neighborhood and the snowMILF almost hit us backing out of her driveway. I suppose she didn't expect anyone to be there, SINCE THE ROAD STOPPED BEING PLOWED JUST A FEW HOUSES AFTER HERS. So we drove down to the end and turned around in the circle, and laughed for a bit. I suppose in the summer the directions may have worked, but they certainly didn't today. So we turned around and then on the way out of the subdivision, there we see her car stuck in a snowbank. We asked if she needed help, and she said no. She was calling her husband for help. Even though she couldn't get a hold of him, we realized there really wasn't anything we could do to help, so we did the next best thing. We asked her for directions to Snowbasin and left her and her baby in the car to fend for themselves. Nice, huh?

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 07:05 PM

Eventually we got to Snowbasin and it was every bit as incredibly nice as you have heard. Most of the lifts were small gondolas like this. It sure was nice to ride up in a nice warm wind protected semiprivate car.

RenegadeRick · 02-11-2008, 07:12 PM

So Snowbasin was cool, but had quite a few flat spots that spelled snowboarding danger. I hung out with my snowboarder buddy until he was worn out from all the swimming. Then I ditched him and went to find my skier friends for the rest of the day. We spent most of our time on the Strawberry, Needles and John Paul lifts. It was a sweet place indeed.

We ended up at Chili's for dinner and I got Tilapia and a small steak. Most of the other guys got ribs that they were disappointed with, but my meal was decent enough. Then we rolled back to the hotel, did a little hottubbing and some beerdrinking and passed out early.

Here is one more photo from Snowbasin to tide you over until I can post up about Powder Mountain.

RenegadeRick · 02-13-2008, 12:01 PM

So we found our way to Powder Mountain quite a bit more easily than we did to Snowbasin.

My friends decided to hire a guide to show us some cool stuff we hadn't seen before and that worked out somewhat well.

We decided to stick together as a group and see how things went. We started off at the main lodge and headed for the Timberline lift. Just before rolling out our guide, Joe says something about how he didn't get out yesterday and this run would be a good chance to find out how the snow is. Less than a minute later, Joe crashes into the snow on the side of the run and as I slide past him I ask, "So... how is it?" HAHA.

So we ride up Timberline and head down to the Hidden Lake lift, but instead of stopping there, Joe suggests that we continue on down the catwalk to the Paradise lift. He thinks this is where we will find the deepest powder.

So we ride down the catwalk and when we get there, the lift is broken. Apparently one of the safety sensors is malfunctioning and the lift keeps shutting down. The story is that we were some of the last people to get down the catwalk before they closed it since the lift was down. So we waited for almost 40 minutes for them to get the lift running again and at least we got this group photo to show for it. Pictured from left to right are me, Brent, Mike, Rick, Tim, and Andy.

RenegadeRick · 02-13-2008, 12:11 PM

Joe was right about Paradise. The snow there was DEEP DEEP DEEP. We went and dived down the skier's left hand side of the mountain and found it to be steep and deep. Bottomless even.

I think this photo gives a good feel for just how it was.