March 13-14, 2010 Brighton Powder

We woke up the morning of the 12th and the furnace was blowing cold air rather than warm air. So after a couple hours troubleshooting, we visited an RV dealer and gave them some of our “old money” to fix it. Seeing it was 17degrees the previous evening at Brighton, we needed our furnace, especially being old and arthritic.

We were just leaving the RV dealer in Salt Lake City to visit some friends in Idaho Falls when we got a cell call from Perl in Seattle. His comment was simple “Did you see the 2:30pm mountain weather update for the Wasatch?” Ahhhh, no! So being a good ski buddy, he read the forecast for the 8-15” storm cycle due in the next 36 hours. As most of you would certainly appreciate, we blew off our visit to Idaho Falls (very politely and with sincere regrets) and implemented our “powder rule”.

The storm was forecasted to arrive after 11AM, so we did some laundry in the morning and arrived at Brighton at 11:30AM – to a dry parking lot. I put the chains on the campervan while it was still pleasant, knowing that I would need them to leave the parking lot later in the day. By 1PM there was a snow storm raging, visibility of 30 yards, 3” of new on the vehicle, and it was time to leave the camper and get our free lift tickets. The next 3 hours was pure delight – powder skiing the whole time with limited visibility and white stuff blowing up our nostrils. Yeah, we did need the chains just to drive out of the lot.

We woke the 14th to the beautiful sounds of the pay loader plowing the lot around our rig, and charges going off by the ski patrol on the mountain. I called the ski report and there was 10” new, but not enough to close the road to Big Cottonwood Canyon. We arrived at the Great Western quad 15 minutes before the opening, and we were in chair 6. The snow was light and boot deep, but on Friday the 12th (the day we spent doing the RV fix-it thing), things warmed considerably and the base became firm. On steep terrain we could feel the firm base, but on intermediate or off piste the conditions were nice, cold powder. We spent 3 hours cycling and decided our aging knees needed a break.

After 5 days of powder skiing at Brighton, it’s time to head north to Teton Pass and Grand Targhee, ID.

didja order up a half pile?

didja order up a half pile?

I really wanted to BUT we arrived too late to eat and get first tracks.

I think it was Jill's fault.