That does it for ski season. By any measure, it was a weird one. After a couple of exceptional snow years, this year was a bust.
November came on strong, raising hopes for a three-peat, but it was not to be. Park City Mountain opened Nov. 22 on the typical ribbon of machine-made snow. It’s always fun to get out early, and while it isn’t great skiing, it gets my feet back under me and whets the appetite.
Deer Valley broke a long tradition of never changing the published dates, and opened early for Thanksgiving. They passed out stickers that said, “Giving Thanks on Two Planks.”
The Deer Valley opening was more “open” than at Park City Mountain, with more runs, more lifts,and a general sense that they were up and running.
The overall rollout at Park City felt slow, whether it was lack of customers, lack of employees, or an unlucky bet that the snow would keep coming is anybody’s guess. But Deer Valley had enough open to be legitimate skiing, while Park City was still on Home Run/Treasure Hollow ribbon of death.
The weather forecasters were having conniptions over a “bomb cyclone” storm that was going to dump multiple feet of snow on us. It was a dud, with maybe 5 inches of very wet snow. That was a pattern that persisted all year. Alta would sometimes score the big dump, but it had a hard time getting going on this side of the ridge.
The early season conditions required a large posse of interesting friends to keep it interesting, with the social aspect propping up a pretty lackluster ski experience. Some days we managed to last upwards of three hours. Hardpack groomers wear out pretty quickly. I dug an old pair of very stiff skis out of the garage for the first time in a couple of years, and stayed on them deep into January.
It was definitely a year of contrasts.
Park City had the ski patrol union strike that really made a mess of things. The town rallied around the patrollers, who were making a very reasonable, even modest, request and taking a principled stand. Donations to their strike fund exceeded $300,000.
Corporate dug in, and the end result was two weeks of disastrously bad press coverage for the whole town before the inevitable capitulation.
To their credit, everybody quickly got the operation up and running again, but it took a while to get more terrain set up. It was painful, and shouldn’t have been necessary. The patrollers union managed their communications perfectly, while corporate bungled the PR.
Meanwhile, Deer Valley brought the Keetley lift and a whole lot of new terrain on line a full year early. Two days before the Keetley chair opened, they were still moving dirt. A couple of cold nights gave them some snow cover, and despite a few mechanical hiccups along the way, the east entrance was up and running.
I parked there several times, and other than confusing a 40-year pattern of the group meeting at Snow Park, it worked well. It should be even better next year as more lifts come on line — solving the traffic jam at Sultan — and getting some better base facilities in. Pretty remarkable that they could pull all of that together at the same time it was taking maximum effort to bring the rest of the resort on line with the mediocre snowpack.
I had the first real powder day of the year in mid-January, skiing the Thaynes lift. It was a kind of rude reminder than no matter how many (short) days I had put in on the hardpack, that didn’t get me in condition for skiing deep snow.
The coldest night of the winter was Jan.20, when I had -20º at my house. That’s cold by any measure, but what a contrast with a winter when rain was always a looming possibility.
It was into February before things really felt “normal” in terms snowpack. A couple of storms more or less redeemed the season, and there were some actual powder days.
March 6 brought another big, strange storm. Fifteen inches of good snow up top, with bare streets in town. It was a real powder day, or rather, powder hour. By 10:30 Empire Bowl was completely chowdered. We got to the gate just as the rope dropped heading out to the Chutes and X-files.
Nobody read the fine print, and the traverse was still closed half way out. Instead of X-files in the trees, we had an unexpected 15-foot cornice drop into Chute 4 or 5 (I can never tell which is which). It says right on the back of my AARP membership card that I don’t need to do cornice drops anymore. I survived it, and that was the primo run of the whole season.
Some ski seasons stand out for the excellent snow and powder skiing. This year stands out as a year of transition. Some very good days, one or two really great days, and a whole lot of days when it just felt crowded and overwhelmed.
The spring skiing has been really good; it just started in February. I still managed 70 days, and enjoyed excellent company with long-time friends. That’s what it’s all about.
A big thanks to all the resort workers who made the best of a challenging season. It would not have happened at all without your work.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.
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