A Wasatch December To Remember

     This December has been the best skiing/snowboarding of any December that I can recall.  My dad, who has been ripping up Snowbird and the Wasatch since 1976, agrees that this has been the best December.  Prior to the solstice my dad and I were able to ride North Chute at Snowbird.  To put this into context, North Chute was never open during the 09/10 season.

     A major storm cycle started the same day as winter break, and lasted 17 days, until the day school started back up.  That is more than 2 weeks of day after day,  foot plus deep pow.  The first day of the year that we rode the entire day, from first tram to 4:00 pm Peruvian to 5:00 pm Chickadee was December 29th.  There were low crowds, and lots of wind.  Each run we would go to the same spot, and it would be filled back in so we could not see our tracks from the previous runs.   At two in the afternoon we dropped into Candleabra and the left side was mid chest deep with no tracks.  Unbelievable. 

     On our  last run on P-dog, we stopped for a second and watched some bro bras huck some cliffs on Baldy.  Further down the mountain a couple of the same baldy bros were stomping around on their skis in the woods to our right.  They were packing out a jump.  We sat and watched them for about 5 minutes, then they hiked up, and hit their jump.  It was pretty minimal.  More bros came and hit the jump as well.  I traversed over and hit the jump, then proceeded down to the bottom of chickadee. The day was so good that my dad and I took two chickadees which had about 5" of new snow on it.  The idea was floated around of staying up the canyon because it was fairly obvious it would close.  By the time we got home the canyon had already closed and did not open until late the next morning.    

     My favorite day of the month was the 30th, the day we went up north, (Which I can not tell you specifics).  The day started off with a long car ride, north ward bound.  We packed five of us into our truck, and we were off.  When we were driving up the canyon, we checked out all the good lines, and they looked sick.  Mental note for later in the day and yes we got them fresh fresh fresh.

     Exiting the car we were met by a very chilly wind, and I was grateful for my down jacket.  It was a bit of a goat rope getting our tickets, and our fingers nearly froze trying to get our passes on our jackets.  There were lots of people.  My dad said it was the most people he has ever seen there.  No worries though, we were dialed into the rhythm and the lines.  We bombed down a cat track, and got some fun pow shots on the edges.  Riding up the chairlift, we talked to a Ice coast tourist, who was an interesting fellow.  My dad and I got off the lift, rode down a little ways, popped off our boards, and with a little hike turned a regular day into the dream.   The whole day was amazing, we got a lot of good snow, every run untracked.  We continued to ride commando road shots long after the resort was closed making for a very long day.

    The new year brought an end to the storm cycle and we decided a little bc kicker action was in order.  On New Years day we went up to the land of no snowboarders and built a kicker on Flagstaff Ridge.  My dad has been snowboarding all the south facing terrain across the road from Alta for more than thirty years but if Oh-no has his way that will come to an end.......sad.  Oh-no wants to build a lift in the most popular backcountry access area of the entire Wasatch.  Here is a short vid from that little kicker session.