Day 55, Uphill traffic at Snowbird in tights and whippets

Some big plans were laid down last night. Jared and crew schemed. Sam called me and said we were going to start at Snowbird, go over American Fork twins, over the other side into AF, climb back out, and end down Scotties into White Pine. Got to the parking lot following Sam and Jared who parked in the early morning employee parking. I tried to follow suit but got busted, not because I'm not an employee, but because I wasn't carpooling. Sent to the lower lot, I bit my tongue to not snitch on the brothers. I jogged back to meet them, and found Alex and Bart fretting with Sam and Jared about the wind, snow, visibility, and avy conditions. The decision was made to forgo the AF trip and just move over through the gate at the top of Gad 2, along the ridge, and over to Scotties for some laps.

Cruising the cat tracks and straight up the groomers.

Looking for the patrollers to sign out before leaving the gates.

Off we went to do the patrollers job for them. And, I guess that we did.

That's the crown from the slide Alex ripped out while skinning toward the ridge. He went for a little ride but was able to steer himself clear. Here he is hiking back up from where he was deposited.

At that point we decided to head back to the car and go down canyon to find some safer terrain, hopefully out of the wind and clouds. We rallied down the powder coated groomers laying down first tracks on the couple inches since the resort was yet to open. At the top of Big Emma, a ski team had slalom gates set up. I opted to head down to the right of the gates and received a chorus of irate yelling from the team/patrollers. Always one to avoid confrontation I kept on going and headed out the bottom, back to the car. Sam decided to piss them off further and laid waste to the gates and tucked it home. Driving down the canyon looking for better weather we ended up on Wasatch Dr, and prematurely called it a day.