Utah 2022-2023 Utah Ski Resorts/Conditions/Meetups

[Phelmut]

Must have been a 199 inch rock...

Somebody brought it from Big Sky.

 

[bbinder]

Tuesday at Solitude

 

[bbinder]

We went to Alta today with low expectations. The mountains were sheathed in clouds and the sky looked grim. It was raining in the valley when we started the drive up, and snowing fairly heavily on the canyon road. Marcia kept remarking how nervous she was about the drive - about halfway up, I told her that I started out nervous but she was making me more nervous… Arrived in heavy snow and we didn’t think that we would last too long. But since we arrived safely, I figured that we may as well ski. As soon as we hit the slopes the sky lightened with occasional sunshine. We ended up skiing until we were thoroughly satisfied. I talked to myself about taking one more run, but between pain in my shoulder, back, and knee I was p,or ably better off not taking another last run. The drive down was less dramatic and heavy precipitation started again once we were back in the valley.

 

[John Webb]

My butt (now almost healed) smacked a rock hard weeks ago entering Great Scott at the bird. Run straight out of Ministry of bad Ideas. Not the entry As I entered at same angle 4 days earlier but going in in a complete zero viz whiteout with snow blowing sideways. Only injury all year !

 

[Jerez]

We have to be out of our place on Winter Park the 31at until the 6th of April. Going to head to Utah. Thinking Solitude and or Brighton. Only skied Solitude once about a million years ago.

Advice on where to stay up canyon (don't want the commute). Trying not to break the bank. Not fussy people but not dirtbag hostel types either. Solly or Brighton to stay?

Also which is better to ski? We are both advanced skiers but my DH has serious back issues and is not supposed to ski bumps. If it is good deep snow its OK but not big hard bumps. I personally prefer tree skiing. Not afraid of steep but not looking for bragging rights either.

Thanks for any advice. We would welcome a meet up too.

 

[AmyPJ]

Craziest drive home all season today! The roads weren’t horribly slick, just whiteout blizzard conditions and blowing snow that created some crazy slick spots. Glad we left when we did! Took the 16 yo powder hound up and bopped around for a couple hours. Vis was horrible-she couldn’t care less, but I was getting dizzy ‍

 

[bbinder]

We decided to leave our apartment at 11:40ish to head up to Alta. We avoided the 1.5 hour drive across Sandy that @JohnL reported to us, but we were in the middle of a serious snow squall. Sneaked onto the canyon road 4 minutes before a scheduled closure. Halfway up the canyon, it was apparent that visibility was zero - could not see the road, the edges of the canyon, nada. We decided that we did not care to be on the evening news as a road casualty and turned around where the snow plow turn-around was. Driving down was even worse because the windshield wipers began to ice up. At the bottom of the canyon, I was able to execute a neat left hand turn on the icy road using trail braking oversteer.

The car handled everything fine. I have driven in a lot of really bad storms, and I think that this was the worst that I have ever seen.

 

[Jim Kenney]

I had some home improvement errands to run this AM. Was motivated to try to get up LCC or BCC this PM, but sporadic road closures in both canyons finally put me in NO-GO mode around 1:30 PM.
Hope to get up LCC tomorrow, but we shall see?

 

[luliski]

We have to be out of our place on Winter Park the 31at until the 6th of April. Going to head to Utah. Thinking Solitude and or Brighton. Only skied Solitude once about a million years ago.

Advice on where to stay up canyon (don't want the commute). Trying not to break the bank. Not fussy people but not dirtbag hostel types either. Solly or Brighton to stay?

Also which is better to ski? We are both advanced skiers but my DH has serious back issues and is not supposed to ski bumps. If it is good deep snow its OK but not big hard bumps. I personally prefer tree skiing. Not afraid of steep but not looking for bragging rights either.

Thanks for any advice. We would welcome a meet up too.

I’m not a Solitude or Brighton expert, but I have skied at both and stayed at Solitude. Brighton probably has more tree skiing and maybe more natural terrain features. Or maybe it just seems more interesting than Solitude because I’ve only skied there once vs many times at Solitude. I don’t know if there’s lodging at Brighton. Maybe there are private residences that you can rent. When I stayed at Solitude we stayed at the Solitude Inn. If I stayed at Solitude again I would get a place with a kitchen. Restaurant options are very limited! We were there during the weekend and didn’t make reservations and ended up having deli pizza for dinner.

 

[ss20]

Full interlodge at Alta and Snowbird. Alta reported 5" in a single hour. Hope everyone makes it home safe tonight.

 

[JohnL]

Happy happy joy joy.

 

[JohnL]

 

[Jim Kenney]

We have to be out of our place on Winter Park the 31at until the 6th of April. Going to head to Utah. Thinking Solitude and or Brighton. Only skied Solitude once about a million years ago.

Advice on where to stay up canyon (don't want the commute). Trying not to break the bank. Not fussy people but not dirtbag hostel types either. Solly or Brighton to stay?

Also which is better to ski? We are both advanced skiers but my DH has serious back issues and is not supposed to ski bumps. If it is good deep snow its OK but not big hard bumps. I personally prefer tree skiing. Not afraid of steep but not looking for bragging rights either.

Thanks for any advice. We would welcome a meet up too.

There is the small, old Brighton Lodge beside the slopes, but other than that most accoms at Brighton would have to be in private homes, maybe some on VRBO, and few are slopeside? Solitude has more slopeside condos/accoms in its village and a couple of places to eat, but agree kitchenette would be very useful.

In theory, by the start of April the volume of tourists is supposed to slow and make staying cheaply in valley and commuting up to the resorts much easier, but this year is extraordinary in many ways. Also, recommend you ski both if you're there three or more days. Again in normal year it's easy to ski connector trail and do both in one day, but this season connector has been mostly closed due to avi danger.

 

[JohnL]

Crews estimate this slide at White Pine is up to 15’ deep/300’ wide.

 

[Jim Kenney]

Crews estimate this slide at White Pine is up to 15’ deep/300’ wide.

Wow, if I was with you I would like to think I'd have packed some sort of libation in my boot bag to help pass the time.

 

[4ster]

Another “snowing as hard as it can snow day!” & another almost bell to bell day, Gotta luv Springtime . It really started up full force around mid-day & rarely let up the rest of the day.
one of the rare breaks…


I had a 4 o’clock meet at the bottom of Ogden Canyon, I never got there…

 

[4ster]

Crews estimate this slide at White Pine is up to 15’ deep/300’ wide.

There were just talking about it on the news.

 

[Pequenita]

Where were you @JohnL ? I have comedic (if you weren’t in it) video of the Wildcat parking lot after interlodge lifted from the GMD dining room. Chaos!

 

[Daniel]

Full-on storm in BCC for most of the day today and still snowing reasonably hard when I left Solitude at 6:55 p.m. Having put in big days racking up lots of vertical on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday (all powder days), I slept in and woke up to 6" of snow at my home that needed shoveling before heading up the canyon for a day of work. It would have been a smooth drive up to within a half-mile of Solitude's Moonbeam base, if not for the avalanche debris that hit the road both below and above Butler Fork. One large UDOT front-end loader was on site attempting to keep one lane passable to alternating up and down bound traffic as debris continued to accumulate periodically. We were lucky to make it past those slide paths before the road closed for nearly four hours of mitigation and snow removal/clean up. Added excitement in the form of a UDOT explosives hauling truck attempting to reload at Solitude and finding the usual Friday/Saturday/Sunday mid-day car park gridlock not to his liking (plenty of horn honking and quasi-reckless driving in blizzard conditions seemingly added to his frustration but only marginally sped up the completion of his mission). A friend on the SSP told me it was snowing at a 4" per hour rate between noon and 1:30 p.m. It was also snowing hard outside that time period, although with somewhat less intensity. The intermittent strong wind gusts made for many periods of full-blown whiteouts. On a related note, the tremendous quantity of snow in Solitude's village makes entry to certain buildings similar to navigating one's way through slot canyons in southern Utah. Ditto for the work of the crew that must maintain access to fire hydrants throughout the resort premises. Yet another long time-consuming commute down the canyon at the end of the day. Traffic attempting to make it up to Brighton for the night session was backed up for many miles.

Seasonal snowfall totals at the CC resorts as of early this morning (it snowed a lot throughout today so totals will be taking a big leap upward):
Brighton 743"
Alta 723"
Solitude 671"
Snowbird 663"

 

[JohnL]

Where were you @JohnL ? I have comedic (if you weren’t in it) video of the Wildcat parking lot after interlodge lifted from the GMD dining room. Chaos!

I parked up at Albion. More orderly exit, sloooow, but comedy trying to get cars dug out. 2-3 foot drifts around my car.

If you are at GMD, you’ll get some nice country club turns in tomorrow am. Enjoy.