Day 21 Snowbird - Mount Hutt on steroids

The pull down bed provided a remarkably comfortable sleep. I awoke just before 8am fully intending to get to the tram by 9am. An hour to cook and eat pancakes, roll, stretch, get into the ski kit and walk the 100m to the lift should be plenty of time yeah?
Trouble is the pancakes took way longer than expected to cook. The stupid electric element just wouldn't heat up. I so prefer cooking with gas, it's instant heat. I had the element on medium but out of frustration I turned it up to high. In the meantime I burnt 3 rounds of toast because I was getting so distracted by the pancakes and the element that refused to heat up. Eventually I put me specs on and it all became clear. I'd turned the element down to low, not up to high. :-)
The mystery of the reluctant element solved I finally tucked into my pancakes and peanut butter on toast. No coffee though, I'd forgotten to get it at the supermarket so had to settle for mountain dew.

I got to the tram at 9:45am, not acceptable by Mason standards but what can you do. The tram wasn't running... too windy, so I boarded the nearest high speed quad, Peruvian Express, and headed up. My chairlift buddy was a very friendly snowboarder chap who told me this was the windiest day of the season and every other time he'd ridden Snowbird there'd been at least a foot of fresh powder....spewing.

Peruvian Express quad and the Cliffs complex beyond. Not sure how it got it's name.

We crested the ridge that towers above the 'village' and entered a massive bowl called Peruvian Gulch, which was quite reminiscent of Mt Hutt...only bigger (naturally this is America), and with lots of trees. The wind picked up and the chair was getting buffeted around quite a bit...the similarities with Mount Hutt continued. This particular chair terminated at the base of a cliff about 30m from the top of the bowl. I got off the chair and slid past a hole in the cliff face...a tunnel with a magic carpet that people were entering and being whisked away into the darkness. I'll have to check that out I thought, but first things first, warm up run. The wind was blowing snow around and it became immediately evident that there were some fabulous pockets of wind drifted powder.

I started on a blue called Chip's Run but got drawn into a black called Primrose Path, a natural half pipe that was loaded with wind drifted snow. Not sure why it's rated black, it was awesome. The snow was so soft, the next best thing to actual powder.

I rode Peruvian Express again, the howling wind, appeared to be getting stronger. Mt Hutt probably would be closed under similar conditions. Exiting Peruvian I lined up the magic carpet for a run through the tunnel. The tunnel, about 100m long, cuts through the mountain and comes out the other side in a bowl called Mineral Basin. In contrast to the blustery conditions of Peruvian Gulch, Mineral was completely calm.

Mineral Basin

More stunning scenery and terrific snow. I got a couple of runs in Mineral Basin before the wind got up. Somehow it went from calm to gale in 15 minutes. They kept the Mineral Express running to allow people to get back to the other side. By the time I got to the other side the wind was raging like Mt Hutt on steroids. I took a couple of runs on lower lifts but visibility was getting pretty tough, horizontal blowing snow will do that. By 1:30pm they'd closed the whole mountain. Apparently a first for Snowbird this season.

All in all I didn't get a whole lot of skiing in today. But what skiing I got was pretty good. Snowbird is an amazing mountain with a ton of wicked terrain, and the snow condition is as good as anywhere. Compared to other places we've been the runs are quite narrow, and quite crowded given Snowbird's close proximity to Salt Lake City. Didn't see too many decent skiers....none in fact. Lots of kids on stunt skis blasting around out of control.

Snowbird base area the Inn is right foreground.

Wasn't that bothered about early finish. Hit the gym for a workout, then hot tub. Soaking in the hot tub surrounded by the mountains was pretty special.

Bought some groceries and gonna have a cook up at home tonight. Will definately hit the tram by 9am tomorrow.