PowMow, UT: March 2015 Duck's Excellent Adventure

[Duck]

Since Harvey made a thread out of this trip I'll back the bus up and tell you the story. Last March while eating at Basil and Wicks I decided to ask my lovely wife if she would mind if I went to Powder Mountain for the entire month of March. Much to my suprise she said,"Go ahead have fun". Well it didn't take me long to set up my trip. By the end of April I booked the month of March and bought my season pass when it went on sale this summer.($395.00 for full season pass for those 62-69) age does have an advantage sometimes.

So on Feb. 26th I left North Creek @ 5:00am and didn't stop to sleep until I arrived in Odgen, UT 36 hours later on Feb.27th, too excited to sleep . So driving straight thru gave me an extra ski day (32 days at Pow Mow). I've Skied everywhere else in UT and have read good things about Pow Mow, but things are better than what you read. Yesterday was day 3 after the foot and a half we had on Tuesday and if you know where to ski there is still a lot of fresh lines to be had. I was told today by a bartender downtown that Alta was skied out by 2:00pm on Tuesday. Today was a tele day so I only skied groomers a few trees and bumps. This was my 8th day and I still haven't skied all that is open and I know tomorrow with a little hiking I'll find fresh lines.

This is a very light snow year so Powder Country is closed. Powder Country is a section of the mt. where you leave the main ski area and return on a bus.The reason things stay untracked is because of the lack of lifts and skiers. 7000 acres with 5 lifts and a couple cats. Which at times is a pain because there are a lot of runouts to get back to the lifts, but I'm not complaining. An example of what I'm talking about is, what if there is no High Peaks chair at Gore and you had to ski out to the base to get back to the Dark Side. How long would the pow last. But that is what makes this mt. great.

I booked a cat ride tomorrow for Lighting Ridge, another area I haven't been to. After 8 days here I have to say I booked the best place I have ever skied for the trip of my lifetime.

Wed the day after the storm, 2nd pow day

Lightning Ridge

 

[Duck]

Pow Mow ski day 9 and 10, Sunday was another blue bird day. I arrived early and took a 9:30 cat ride up Lighting Ridge.

My $15.00 cat ride

What I didn't realize is how warm it got on Sat. afternoon, all of that nice untracked was crusted over. I'm glad I took the cat and had the experince of skiing a different side of the mt. But the conditions were anything but great. This place skis a whole lot different if the off trail skiing is bad. The groomers are mostly blue and green not much of a challange. I skied until noon and called it a day.

10:00am Sunday morning looking Down from Lighting Ridge. I counted 5 skiers in the Timberline area.

There was an article in Ski Mag about this guy who travels the world tramps out designs with snowshoes. It just so happens he was at Powder last week.

Monday I was smarter, I took a 3 mile hike up the canyon were I'm staying first thing in the morning and then went skiing late morning. By then the snow was softening up and turning to corn. The Timberline area skied great, Sun Bowl was skied in and bumped up nice and the trails in the north side out of the sun skied well also.

 

[Duck]

My corn strategy is lucky timimg and I don't like going early with spring conditions because frozen cord kind of sucks. Then again any snow is better than no snow.

This is a view of Snowbasin I have to look at while eating breakfast.

Tuesday I started out with a 4 mile hike and I went to the mt. about noon again. I skied with a local and found out after a few runs that he is 86 years old. He skied better than anyone I've ever seen ski at that age. There is hope for all of us if we never slow down and stop. It didn't warm up enough so there wasn't any corn to be had today.

Wednesday was cloudy, first day that wasn't blue bird since the storm last Tuesday. Light was flat, but we did get some late afternoon sun. I found a used pair of teles in the rental shop that I bought after test driving them. As I was leaving the top parking lot I looked to my left and saw a bald eagle go soaring by about 40 yards away. A few inches of snow is in the forecast for tomorrow.

As you can see there is no snow in the valley. I spotted these mule deer grazing in the sun on my morning hike.

 

[Duck]

I awoke to rain showers in the valley and 3" of heavy wet concrete on top of the mt. I didn't ski bad because there was only 3", but when you were nearing the bottom it got very sticky. I skied until 1:00 and then did a tourist thing and went to Crystal Hot Springs and soaked for an hour and a half.

It was a whiteout. You had to ski the trees.

 

[Duck]

This week has seen a high pressure system with warm weather continue. With daytime highs anywhere from the low 40's to high 60's. Spring skiing has been great, except for a couple days when it got too hot and the snow became very sticky.

Not exactly why you come to Pow Mow, but that's the weather.

The weeks highlight was having both of my sons come out and ski with me. They were here for 3 days each but only overlaped one. This being only the first time in 12 years that the three of us have skied together. Which was a very special time for me because we grew up a skiing family and don't have that time together anymore.

Snow is in the forecast for the next couple days but it's not a major storm with only 2-4 inches predicted.

Upper parking lot Sunday morning 3/22/15 at 9:15

My sons, Scott and A J taking a break

 

[Duck]

Day 24, we finally got off piste again today with 3 inches of heavy snow that skied like 6-8. It's been 2 weeks that off piste skiing has been really bad and almost unskiable but today was a different story. I left the top lodge at 9:15 (lifts open at 9:00) and I was first down. Took groomers until they were cut up then headed for the trees. There was just enought snow to smooth out the off piste skiing and it skied excellent, like butter on bread.

I made 10 runs before lunch and was going to finish the day off with another 10 (had 3 more to go) when I came to the Hidden Lake Lift and it was stopped. Jim Cantore would have been jumping up and down, there was thunder snow so they closed the mt. at 3:00. There were approx. 80-100 skiers at the lift and our only way back to the top and to the lodges was by powder cat. The cat could only haul 20 skiers at a time but I was lucky enough to get the first ride.

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Forecast for Tuesday 4-7 inches

 

[Duck]

3/24/15, I was greeted by 6 inches of light pow this morning and it snowed all day. Another great pow day!

3/25/15 Guess what? Another 6 inches last night and it filled in all of yesterdays tracks. Blue bird skies and and well over a foot from the last three days. Three consecutive days of freshes with each day being better then the last.

But even the best plans don't always work out and I had to return home and cut my trip short by four days. 26 straight days of skiing (of which 8 were powder days) and the rest were with blue bird skies and spring temps. I've never skied a mt. where you can so much untracked, run after run day after day and with only a third of it's annual snow fall average. Yes, when I go back to Utah it will be Pow Mow.