What a thoroughly excellent weekend. I took Friday off and drove out to Salt Lake City with Bob, where we met up with some cohorts from days of yore at UIUC. The stated purpose of the trip was to find some Utah powder and drink as much beer as possible.
Check and check.
Saturday was spent at Snowbird during an intense snowstorm. There was just about zero visibility near the top, and I experienced my first whiteout conditions. There’s something disconcerting about not knowing whether you are moving or at rest, due to the complete lack of audio-visual clues, and quite a few times, I actually thought I was standing still, only to find myself on the ground a few seconds later because I was actually riding the snowboard and ended up catching an edge or somesuch.
This was my first time in really deep powder which necessitates a completely different riding style, wherein you keep your weight on your uphill leg rather than your downhill leg. Catching face shots of powder was somewhat cool, but it would have been cooler to be able to see.
The visibility was much better lower on the mountain, and we spent the day riding some hard stuff and mucking about in the terrain park. Apparently, I had quite the specatular set of spills, and my oblique muscles felt like I was bitten by a rabid dingo.
Sunday was an excellent halfday spent at Brighton. The sun was shining, and there was tons of untouched powder in the trees. The runs were difficult, but not over our heads, and there were relatively easy sections connecting the trees, so there was much more of a sense of continuity from top to bottom compared to Snowbird.
Beer in Utah? You bet. Bob and I had a huge cooler filled with a smorgasboard of Colorado microbrews, many of which the guys from Illinois had never heard of before. I can only imagine what the Mormon housekeepers thought each morning, as they attempted to clean a room inhabited by 6 men who weren’t too concerned about personal hygiene so much as they were concerned about getting rip roaring drunk.