Pinto - you hit the first sunny weekend we've had all season! It's up to you whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. :D
Friday was unbelievably beautiful, but WARM. The sun and 100 mph wind really did a number on the snowpack Thursday and Friday, hence the reason Snowbird probably wasn't as good on Sat as Alta was on Fri. I skied some south-east facing stuff in BCC on Friday morning, and the wind-sheltered slopes (if you could find any) were pretty good until the sun started baking them. By noon, everything was pretty much toast. Sounds like the wind shifted and ruined whatever was left on Friday night.
I heard the snow was pretty nasty on Sat - breakable crust with an upside-down feel. Hopefully things will settle out and it won't get too hot before the next storm cycle.
Yeah, we were a little late in the week for the main part of the party, but I can't complain. Thursday and Friday were still quiiiiite niiiiice.
And I will do Snowbird again ... I did enjoy the sustained steeps, unlike what we get around here. Most of them had just a little snow, due to the conditions you described. We did a lot of skiing in trees and found some fun little chutes ... basically avoiding crowds and looking for soft snow. We made it over to Thunder Bowl in the afternoon, and it hadn't been open in a while? There was a ton of snow there, which was very fun until it funneled and turned very choppy toward the bottom. I had skied one run on the Auras and then switched to the Monsters earlier in the day because it looked like conditions were better for a heavier, shorter, narrower ski. And they were, until we got to Thunder Bowl, ha ha. Oh well. The Monsters were fine, but the Auras would have been much much better.
(In fact, because of the Monsters, I had my most fun fall ever ... I dug a tip into about 12 feet of crud, pitched forward onto my chest, and flipped over face first, landing right on my feet! Didn't lose a ski or anything. I have no idea how I did that, because I'm not that flexible. I guess something about the mixture of gravity on a very steep slope and slow momentum on a very deep slope enables some funky stuff.)
It would have been good to have a guide at Snowbird ... we were skiing with people at Alta who were familiar with the mountain, plus the snow was much better that day. But I think we did pretty well exploring on our own at Snowbird; I only cliffed out once. (It wasn't really a cliff out ... I skied to a narrow chute that had been hit with a charge, leaving lots of exposed rock and gunpowder but no snow. I decided not to ski it. :D )
He has his eye on some Mythic Riders ....
I hope it cools back down, the warm weather needs to go away for a few more weeks.
