You can see how the dust and smoke have contributed to the thaw. And the snow is losing water content from its base at a super quick rate at this point, making the underlying snowpack less stable.
Not shocked that Regulator is done as its exposure is more western, less sheltered from the sun save for early morning. And with the sun's arc in the sky being about as high as it'll get the whole trail roasts.
In other news: anybody see the updates on the opening of Mirror Lake Highway? Still plenty of snow up there - they're looking at a June 30 opening, a whole month later than last year. This Park Record story from Tuesday has some great drone shots of the big snow clearing machine doing its work.
Yup, what coulda, shoulda been the best spring ever, really wasn’t .WAIT! It snowed at the high elevations this am! That buys us another week, right?
Part of the fun of this experience has been being a naive kid again.
What do we do to get back to the tram in the afternoon? Walk up I'm assuming?
Vince was out there on Father's Day and skied one for the old man ;-)Bird skied much better than expected. Lined up for the tram at 830 saturday morning . got on the 2nd tram.
Road to Provo a bit sketchy but manageable. got 5 quick laps on LIttle Cloud.
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the slopes did feel a bit crowded with limited terrain available.
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line for Little Cloud wasnt bad at all early. glad we beat the crowds. the line for the tram was out of control by the time we downloaded.
Very nice morning at the Bird
Yeah. They understand how much local negative sentiment there is toward the iKon pass.
Birds lack of a parking policy already jammed up LCC last year . the whole world trying to get into the canyon around 7 to get very limited free spots. Driving past snowbird (EVENTUALLY) and you see the Lot FULL signs everywhere. get up to Alta and half the lots still empty. The thought of things getting even worse really makes me sick.Yeah. They understand how much local negative sentiment there is toward the iKon pass.
That said, things could be considerably different next season. Both Brighton and Solitude are going to require parking reservations on weekends. So that could really be a game changer as it did help Alta a lot.
Meanwhile the Bird is going to be the only Cottonwoods resort not requiring weekend parking reservations. Plus the freeloader deal they are offering and the setup is the Bird could get real ugly on weekends. And it could potentially drive more Ikon tourist demand at the Bird I would think as well ..... Of course this dynamo at the Bird could also negatively impacts Alta as well since it is up from the Bird.
Yep. a lot of people are speculating that an apparent rift between Alta and Snowbird is over the parking policy. Unfortunately I think LCC is in real danger of becoming considerably worse than this past season because of Snowbird's unwillingness to shift to reservation system when everyone else has.Birds lack of a parking policy already jammed up LCC last year . the whole world trying to get into the canyon around 7 to get very limited free spots. Driving past snowbird (EVENTUALLY) and you see the Lot FULL signs everywhere. get up to Alta and half the lots still empty. The thought of things getting even worse really makes me sick.
Imagine a parking reservation system that allows you to sleep in , miss the morning traffic madness, arrive at one the best resorts in the world at 11am and still get a decent parking spot. Good luck trying to ski the Bird on that schedule. Learn from your neighbors dumb dumbs
Hot topic for us Altoids! really irks me , lol
Yep. a lot of people are speculating that an apparent rift between Alta and Snowbird is over the parking policy. Unfortunately I think LCC is in real danger of becoming considerably worse than this past season because of Snowbird's unwillingness to shift to reservation system when everyone else has.
If it gets bad enough (and I think there is a high chance it could) then you would think Snowbird would eventually come around to adjusting. But it might take a season of huge pain to get there.
I can easily see how Snowbird could easily draw the bulk of the iKon tourist traffic (free parking, no reservations required and not on the premium iKon pass) plus social media constantly reminding us that if you want to be rad that is the place to go. I also think it's not a stretch that the Bird is going to take more share among the local market with the new freeloader program they are introducing.
Brighton and Solitude's plan is to try and manage it so that UDOT doesn't need to implement a toll up BCC. Unlike Alta and Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton have a good working relationship with each other. Whether their plans work well enough to eliminate the need for a toll is yet to be seen, but they will try as hard as they can in a coordinated fashion to try and prevent it. Plus UDOT is promising bus improvements as well.What I don't understand is why the resorts wouldn't want to better manage parking/canyon congestion. Why make the situation so bad that UDOT implements tolling and the resorts see no revenue... when you can manage it yourself, charge for parking, and make a shitload of money.
Last year was certainly an outlier with the snow. Also something to consider is the economy being on fire for anyone upper-middle class and above for the past 2 seasons. I want to see the economy cool and a normal snow year before we judge the effects of everything implemented the past few years. And there has been a LOT of changes.
I can. Local support is no longer necessary. Local traffic is more of a "problem" now with the mega pass affect. I think we should all expect to pay much more $ to continue access to our local ski mountains that are popular on these passes or be phased out from them.
U of U study suggeste the snow pack melted 2 weeks earlier than it otherwise would have because of the dust. Low Great Salt level was a factor contributing to the dust.You can see how the dust and smoke have contributed to the thaw.