April into May Skiing

While the entire state of Utah is complaining about this long winter we're having, a handful of real skiers are loving every minute of it. Concerns of flooding in the valley are being pushed back with each winter storm, because the snow just simply is not melting.  Snowbird reached 700" over the weekend, which forced the cancellation of my adult league soccer game (4" of snow on the soccer field), but allowed for a great afternoon of powder skiing.  The base depth is close to 200", which is over 16 feet, btw.  I haven't skied this much in years, maybe ever.  However, I still feel like I missed out on a lot of really good days.  That being said, I had my best day of the season on Tuesday, April 26th:
At 5am, I got a text from the Unified PD, saying that LCC road was going to close at 6:30am for avalanche control.  I looked at the snow totals, and it was something like 6", enough for me to ditch work for at least the morning.  On the road by 5:30, I easily made the cutoff at the mouth of the canyon.  I was a little worried that the  UPD officer was going to ask me where I was headed, but he just waved me on (you're not supposed to just hang out up there without accommodations).  The road was snowy, but a 2000 Dodge Durango, with close to 200k miles with balding tires, but 4 wheel drive engaged made the drive pretty easy.  I camped out for a couple hours, until the interlodge was lifted, and b-lined to the tram plaza.  Caught the first tram, then the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and by then, the road was finally open for the dudes that didn't make the 6:30 road closure.  So I moved to Peruvian, which was pretty empty.  Snow was good everywhere, and my Atomic Atlas' were perfect for the day.  The snow was deeper than reported, about 12" pretty much everywhere, but was pretty dense, smeary, fast, and smooth.  The 6 back to back tram rides I got in before the road opened, just crushed the cat skiing I had a couple weeks earlier.  A couple pro skiers got some too- I saw Dean Cummings, Jonny and Angel Collinson up there.  Its pretty awesome bumping shoulders with skiers like them.
About an hour and a half after the road closed, interlodge went back into effect, due to some avalanche activity along the road.  So, camped out at Cliff Lodge, lounging on a plush leather sofa chair, surrounded by enormous and beautiful Persian rugs.  I felt guilty walking on them with ski boots, but Dick Bass has a few hundred extra, so that thought quickly disappeared.  What seemed like an eternity was finally ended with a hotel representative declaring that the resort was finally open.  It was a mad, crazy dash to whatever cable strung device could get a skier to greater heights.  In my case, I decided to bypass the maze of the tram, for a 45 second wait on Peruvian.  Sure the accessibility is limited on Peruvian, but I'd take 5 runs on it over 1 tram any day.
Anyway, summary is that skiing is rad, even in April, and May of course too.  Looking forward to see how late the season will run.  Probably a good year to play in the mountains, touring some of the high peaks in the Wasatch that I've been dying to reach.
Man I like skiing.  Just need to work my legs more in the gym between sessions so my days can be longer and more fun.  Until next post...

 This persian rug is about 3 stories tall, plus the red one above, another 3 or so stories tall.

 Just the essentials- Mtn dew, kit kat, Burton bibs on a leather couch, and Raptor 120's on a Persian rug.

 Not storming too hard, but a lot of bombs going off outside.

 April 30th, morning surprise

 There used to be cliffs in there, not so much anymore

 Ahhhh. Glad to be skiing on April 30th.

 14" new reported at the time of this pic, May 30th @ Snowbird

 It took the ref an hour to figure out that there wasn't a chance that we could play soccer on this field.  About 4" of fresh snow.

Not quite time to pull the cover off.