Last day in Snowbird dawned dark and gloomy and windy, so I took that as a good excuse to have a lie in. I also needed to pack and check out of the hotel. Got up around 8:30am, had a long leisurely breakfast, sorted out me gear and checked out.
Hit the Peruvian Express at 10:30am. The tram wasn't running. Half way up Peruvian it started snowing hard. Big hail like flakes called Graupel. Caused by turbulence in the cloud that swirls the snow flake around, the Graupel flake gets layered with more and more ice until it becomes too heavy and falls from the sky.
Graupel is like polystyrene pellets and when it accumulates in reasonable depth its like skiing through a big bean bag. It was snowing so hard today that within a couple of hours there was about 2 - 3cm accumulation. More than enough for the bean bag effect.
So the sensation under foot (ski) was very nice indeed. Unfortunately it wasn't matched by the visibility which was appalling. Overall sensation was like skiing through a bean bag with your eyes closed.
Not entirely conducive to relaxing, last day, wind down skiing. I broke for lunch at 1:30pm, keeping an eye on the accumulation because I didn't want to get snowed in and miss my flight.
Lunch was great, I dined at the Fork Lift restaurant which is one of the more posh restaurants in the Snowbird centre...although you wouldn't get that from the name.
I thought what the hell it's me last day....let's splash out. Most the other restaurants were closed so there wasn't a whole lot of options. But lunch was great, and not overly expensive, given it was silver service, and I even had a glass of chardonnay.
It had stopped snowing when I returned to the slopes after lunch. But the visibility was still terrible on top, and the warm temperatures on the bottom meant the snow lower down was very, very heavy and sticky. Elephant snot we call it. A very mixed bag of conditions.
So I called it a day at 3:45pm and returned to the Inn to shower, change, repack my ski gear, and await the shuttle departure at 4:45pm.
Sorry no pics today 'cos me iphone decided it was out of memory, and I'd packed me vid cam. The weather was horrendous anyway.
All in all a fantastic trip. Snowbird is awesome and the perfect epilog to the skiing extravaganza.
Would love to come back sometime, especially if I could get the timing right and hit it with some POW.
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