January 14, 2015, Alta-Snowbird and Tunnel

From SLC we could see the mountains and it was sunny. We got to Alta early and we were the 4th non-employee vehicle in the parking lot. Alta does not allow snowboarders. We knew that Dave P was at Brighton and skiing the Millicent area that was closed yesterday. He sent me a photo of his lines. Eric stopped by just as we were going to get our lift tickets. He and Marilyn are just starting their skiing sojourn, and we’re just wrapping ours up. We received our free lift tickets with our Mountain Collective Passes. Charlie asked if we would ski all the other resorts on the MC Pass. Oh ya! We’ll certainly try to, conditions permitting. The lifts at Alta start running at 9:15am; I don't know why. The Collins lift is a quad and provides easy access to the Albion Base area. The Sugarloaf lift has great trail terrain. Back in 1990 I was skiing with some friends, it was a powder day, and we skied Alf's High Rustler. It’s a run I’ll never forget (I’m pointing to it in one of the pictures); it was a long ski day.

The Ski Patrol was still throwing charges at 10am. Then more terrain was opened and the masses climbed and skied the “big lines”. Alta is not a beginners’ resort. It has 166 trails plus bowls and cliffs. There are only 8 green/easy trails. There were some fantastic skiers – young and old. Between the top of Sugarloaf lift and the traverse heading to the top of Collins lift, there is an access gate between Alta and Snowbird. With our Mountain Collective Pass tickets we can ski between the two areas on the same ticket – great deal. So we crossed over to Snowbird and were at Mineral Basin. WOW! We skied down to the base of the Mineral Basin high speed quad at 9561'. The top is at 11,000' at Hidden Peak which is also the top of the tram line. Some days are just lucky. There was a large group traversing The Path to Paradise then to Bookends Traverse and Bookends Bowl. These lines are fantastic and bring you down to the Mineral Basin quad. We then flipped over to the main side and stopped for lunch at Mid-Gad. Snowbird is a tourist resort and you can ski or snowboard. The last fun part was to ski down to the Peruvian Express quad. At the top we traversed the Tunnel back to Mineral Basin. That was fun. We skied to Baldy Express quad and then skied back to the Alta-Snowbird Interconnect. Now we were back to Alta and skied down to Wildcat Base. This was another Fun Day.

The tunnel rocks