Today was a prototypical tram day. Unofortunately, however, Steve's pass was a chairs-only pass, so instead of doing tram laps, we had to ski all the way down to GadZoom and ride two lifts to ski the Cirque. It was a pain in the ass and certainly not something I wanted to have to do to ski the goods on this ridiculously awesome bluebird powder day.
The wind had wreacked havoc on the new snow, so Little Cloud Bowl was completely wind scorned, but the Cirque had about a foot of soft, fresh snow. Everything else was just OK. Mineral Basin was not yet open.
Steve and I started the day with a nearly untracked run in the Middle Cirque through about a foot of fresh powder. Today would be a good day. I was very glad that I took the day off from work to go skiing. We followed that run with a jaunt through the trees to Dalton's Draw and then continued straight down Silver Fox to the Peruvian Express.
We followed our first run up with another Dalton's run after skiing the bottom half of Primrose/Silver Fox. This time, however, we cut left at Rothman Way to jump back on GadZoom to ski another run in the cirque.
This time, we skied the Lower Cirque, Anderson's and then back down to the base of GadZoom to do it all over again, except this time in the Middle Cirque.
When we got off the Little Cloud lift, we discovered that ski patrol had dropped the rope to Mineral Basin a short time before we arrived. A line of skiers across Mineral Basin was just starting to make its way around the Bookends Traverse.
I said to Steve, "Do you see those skiers out there?"
"Yup."
"We're heading that way. Just keep going no matter if you're ahead of me or behind. Sound good?"
"Yup."
"Giddy up."
Today was the first time I ever took part in the frenzy surrounding a significant inbounds terrain opening on a bluebird powder day. The energy and the anticipation was palpable.
After shooting down the Path to Paradise, the pace slowed as the traverse became slightly uphill. I'm proud to say that I didn't get passed by anyone, and I didn't hear too much complaining from the group, in general. Although Alta is a different crowd altogether, on traverses to fresh snow, the clientele can get rather ornery if someone's holding them back from the goods. At Snowbird, the clientele is much more clueless.
Steve was about a dozen people back from me when I got a chance to look back. At this point, we were on the north-facing side of the Powder Paradise bowl, just before the traverse reaches a spine of rock. The pace had slowed to a crawl. Below me was 500+ feet of completely untracked powder. I decided to break off the traverse and ski down from there. First, I called back to Steve to tell him I was heading down. I didn't know if he heard me, or not, but I figured at least he would see me go.
Immediately upon starting downhill, I fell into a perfect rhythmn. The snow was not particularly light (~ 10.5% water content); it had a buttery consistency, but it made the skiing so smooth. About ten turns later, I reached the bottom of the run. Although it would've been nice to keep going along the traverse to get some more turns, it became evident when I got down that there was actually very little untracked snow left over there, so I was glad I got to ski the untracked snow.
Unfortunately, the wait to ride the Mineral Basin Express back to Hidden Peak was about 45 minutes, so this would be our only run in Mineral Basin for the day.
After the long wait, we skied another run in the Lower Cirque. This time we traversed all the way to just before Tower 3 Chutes. Then we skied Anderson's Hill and back to the base of GadZoom. At this point, my legs were absolutely dead. I surmised that I might have had my buckles buckled too tightly around my calf, which may have been causing the fatigue.
In any case, we took another run. I skied Carbonate, which was full of huge bumps, for the first time since I moved out here. Then we skied down through the Snake Pit (another new run for me), which was similarly unpleasant. After that run, we called it a day.