Wind swept across Jackson Hole’s Rendezvous Bowl and delivered a barrage of stinging snow crystals to my cheeks. Corbet’s Couloir—perhaps the most famous inbounds ski run in North America—fell away precipitously beneath the tips of my skis.
My skiing wanderlust had latched onto resort test pieces like Corbet’s Couloir early on. Dreams of one day skiing chutes like Corbet’s helped propel me from the drumlins of Western New York to the steep skiing in Utah’s Wasatch Range and now, finally, to Corbet’s Couloir.
Catherine’s Area is a series of small drainages at the edge of Alta’s eastern boundary. My friend Brendan and I were introduced to Catherine’s Area for the first time in 2007. A two-minute hike from the top of the Supreme lift brought us to a ledge that served as the beginning of a traverse. It hadn’t snowed for two days, but we still found fresh powder in Catherine’s Area.
We skied a few turns in one drainage, then crossed over a small ridge into the next to find even fresher snow. The run was short but sweet. Once we reached the flats, instead of following the gully back down to the Supreme lift, we stayed high and made our way out to the west-facing slopes below the ridge connecting Patsey Marley and Mount Wolverine. We found more fresh snow there too. That tour cemented Catherine’s Area as a go-to destination that season.
Although the runs in Catherine’s Area are short, especially for the effort required to reach many of them, the area remains a favorite of mine. It seems you can always find good snow there, even several days after a storm.
On the (first) closing day of Alta’s 2021–2022 ski season, I ventured into Catherine’s Area in the afternoon to see if I could find more of the four inches of creamy powder that had fallen overnight. I was pleased with what I found. I compiled a short video to capture the experience of skiing Catherine’s Area (complete with my heavy breathing from the short hike and long traverse). Enjoy!
My favorite movie will always be Dumb & Dumber, which is a comedy starring Jim Carrey (as Lloyd Christmas) and Jeff Daniels (as Harry Dunne) as two half-wits who drive from Rhode Island to Aspen, Colorado, to deliver a briefcase to a woman who had left it in the lobby of an airport. Lloyd was her airport limousine driver, and he had developed a crush on her at first sight. (“Why you going to the airport? Flying somewhere?” was his first attempt at flirting with her.) Lloyd had no idea he had taken a briefcase full of ransom money left for the kidnappers of the woman’s husband.
I remember seeing the movie in the theater with a friend while I was in junior high school—the perfect age to be enraptured by a movie full of sophomoric humor. My friend and I had each smuggled a can of Coca-Cola into the theater. I remember not being able to keep a sip down because of all the laughing.
At the beginning of the movie, Harry and Lloyd were lamenting that they had both been fired from their jobs that day when Lloyd announces: “We’ve gotta get out of this town!”
“And go where? Where we gonna go?”
“I’ll tell you where,” Lloyd assures Harry. “Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called Assspen.”
The scene from Dumb & Dumber that gave this ski day report its name
Since seeing that movie as a teenager, I’ve always wanted to make my own (less idiotic) pilgrimage to Aspen. So, when my friend Mark invited me to join him and his seven-year-old son skiing there, I quickly said yes.
I had read news about the mystery illness. It caused a brief pang of concern, but I figured it wouldn’t become a problem. A co-worker who traveled to Asia in mid-January told us about the new safety measures at the airports there. All the other new viruses that emerged in my lifetime either fizzled out or we learned to mitigate the risks and live with them. Why worry?
Coronavirus Disease 2019, or COVID-19, a respiratory infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was well on its way to becoming a global pandemic.
I never considered not going to Reno, Nevada. I was planning to attend a concert in Reno on Saturday night and ski at Squaw Valley on Sunday. The United States had about 200 confirmed cases of COVID-19 on March 5, the day before I left. China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea were the far-away hotspots for the outbreak then.
Returning from last season’s calf and knee injuries has been more difficult mentally than I anticipated. Most days I just don’t have it. I’m not even sure what it is, but I often find myself fearful on trails and terrain that have never posed a challenge in the past.
But I keep skiing. And I keep struggling.
I thought of different ways to challenge myself and to keep things interesting. I went to resorts I had never skied before (despite living nearby for over a decade), including Park City and Deer Valley. (I’m also planning to ski Solitude for the first time next week.)
This week, I decided to ski from every lift at Alta and Snowbird, which seemed like a fun gimmick to try. I have an Alta-Snowbird season pass; I figured I should take full advantage of it at least once.
Knee MRI showing my nondisplaced tibial plateau fracture
MRI machines make a horrible racket, like a jackhammer. I found the racket soothing. It was loud, but the cadence was at perfectly spaced intervals to lull me to sleep. (I also fall asleep in the dentist’s chair. Is that weird?)
The fall that put me in that MRI machine occurred six weeks earlier during my first ski day of 2019 on January 5. Snowbird wasn’t in great shape that day. The holiday crowds had scraped snow off the high-traffic areas, and the snow conditions were about as bad as it gets in the Wasatch—slick, crusty, and hard-packed.
I arrived at Snowbird early enough to catch the first (public) tram to the top of Hidden Peak. Mineral Basin didn’t open yesterday, so I figured its south- and southeast-facing runs would be loaded with powder snow because of the storm’s strong west-northwest winds.
I was right. The 19 inches of fresh powder on White Diamonds was some of the deepest I’ve ever skied.
I promise to talk (a little) about skiing later, but first let’s go to Hawaii.
The island of Hawaii’s northwest corner is in the rain shadows of Kohala, its oldest volcano, and 13,803-foot Mauna Kea, its tallest. Storms riding the trade winds from the northeast drop most of their rain on the windward side of the island before passing over the volcanoes. Thus, the stark, grassy landscape on the leeward side of the Big Island resembles the dry southeast corner of Idaho more than it does a tropical paradise. The resorts along this coast, however, still deliver quintessential tropical Hawaiian experiences, thanks to meticulous landscaping and modern sprinkler systems.
The Big Island of Hawaii, the archipelago’s youngest island, was literally still under construction when I arrived in November 2017 for the Ragnar Hawaii race. I had flown to the Big Island two days before Marie to see the newest earth on Earth. Lava was still flowing to the ocean from a vent on Kīlauea’s East Rift Zone called Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō (pronounced poo-oo-OH-oh). I parked my rental car amid a bazaar of bike rental outfits. Although the bike rental options were tempting, I stuck to my original plan to hike the four miles to the viewing site.
I started gaining weight as I entered my thirties and my career became more of a burden on my time and energy. I constantly sought the subtle pleasure delivered by washing down a salty, greasy fast-food meal with as much Coca-Cola as I could drink. With my more sedentary, workaday lifestyle, I could no longer avoid the consequences of my unhealthy habits. By fall 2016, I weighed 80 pounds more than I did during the 2005–2006 ski season.
Skiing wasn’t fun anymore; it was almost an annoyance. Weekends became respites from work instead of opportunities to ski.
A late-season storm of huge proportions dropped 26.5 inches of snow starting on Thursday afternoon. The timing was perfect for this ski day to be one of those ridiculously great ski days in the Wasatch. In addition to the snow that had already fallen, there was a 100 percent chance that it would snow all day today, too. In addition to the previous snowfall superlatives, it is April, so many people have already given up on skiing for the season, which would leave the mountain uncrowded.
The strip of snow left in Gunsight at Alta on August 2, 2009
My friend Steve plans to ski in every calendar month this year. With that goal in mind, and a sliver of snow still left on Gunsight at Alta Ski Area, he invited me to join him for another summer ski day.
On Monday, July 7, my friend Steve sent me a photo from his cell phone of the snow still left on Gunsight at Alta. I asked if he would be up for skiing it that weekend. He replied that he and his friend Jorden had already planned to ski the chute on Sunday, and that I could join them. And so a plan was born.
The Peruvian Cirque from the Cirque Traverse at Snowbird Resort
Today’s snow conditions were the toughest I’ve encountered at Snowbird. The groomed trails and some of the sheltered north-facing terrain were the only places where the conditions were reasonable. My original goals for today, however, didn’t include skiing groomed trails. I planned to explore new terrain, including Great Scott, Wilbere Bowl, and S.T.H. Today, it turned out, was not the right day for those endeavors.
Patience was not a virtue present in the tram line this morning. People were cutting in front of Brendan and me until I adopted a defensive stance using my poles. A gaggle of malcontents complained when the line didn’t start moving at the stroke of nine (the tram’s opening time). A few minutes later, a veritable riot broke out when the tram line ticket checker let a group of instructors and their clients through the turnstiles instead of the public. The malcontents heckled her until she started the public line moving again.
It has snowed for eleven straight days and seventeen of the last nineteen. About a hundred inches of snow has fallen at Snowbird since March 3, including a foot last night. At less than 5 percent water content, the new snow was about as light as it gets.
I could barely sleep. The anticipation kept me thinking of what it would be like. I changed sleeping positions all night, from side to side, on my back, on my stomach. Nothing was comfortable. Finally, it was morning, and my dad woke me up. I quickly rose, despite the restless night of sleep.
It was here! I was finally going skiing! I had been dreaming of this day for four years.
