Billowing Bookends – Day Two

Snowbird, Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, February 23, 2011

This would be Rob’s 66^th and last day of the ski season as surgery for his injured shoulder was scheduled for the next day. We got a decent start on the day and arrived at Snowbird around 9:30 am. We dashed out of the car to catch the parking shuttle, but ended up missing it because I was tinkering and a bit disorganized. As it turned out, I left my Leki ski pole straps attached to my second pair of gloves in the back of the car. Of course, I didn’t realize this until the first chairlift ride up the new Peruvian Express. Next time, no bonehead moves! 

Rob rides thru 600-foot tunnel into Mineral Basin

We then headed to the carpet lift through the 600 ft. long tunnel that connects Peruvian Gulch right through the mountain to Mineral Basin. The tunnel is truly a work of modern engineering. The Snowbird folks did a great job of including interpretive signs about the tunnel construction and some clever word games along the way. Once out into the light of day, we jumped right into Double Down, a steep chute with a narrow mouth leading down into the basin. Nothing like taking a warm up run! Or maybe this was warming up Snowbird style? 

Scott rippin' through the pow off The Bookends

From here we headed up the Mineral Basin Express lift and caught The Bookends Traverse all the way out to just shy of the Flora Cliffs. Here’s where we jumped in… at first turn we knew it was the right call. Only a few skiers had hit this slope before us, so half of our turns were virgin, the others maybe crossing one other track. The snow was 8-10” deep, cold and light, almost blower.  Rob mentioned how he was tempted to bounce his turns, powder retro-style. There was a PowderShots photographer strategically positioned about 10 turns in. He snapped away with a motordrive as we hooted past him. I could tell that he was documenting what would be among the best turns of the day, week, month! 

Next run up the other side we took the Little Cloud lift and down the Road to Provo. Here we found some more really nice side-bowl terrain with another fresh 8 to 10” of powder, almost as light as The Bookends run. Another Little Cloud ride to the flanks of Regulator Johnson, then down Organgrinder through Door #1 and Door #2 as we made our way back to the base. We only put in about 2-1/2 hours, but for the terrain we were able to hit, and for the snow we lucked into, the rest of the day would only be compared to the first half, so we decided to celebrate our good fortune by heading down the canyon at noon to grab lunch below. 

On the way out of the lot we picked up a hitchhiker headed down to one of the commuter lots at the base of the Canyon. Her name was Beverly Reidel and she worked in payroll at Snowbird. After pleasantries were exchanged we asked where she was from originally, to our surprise the response was South Londonderry, Vermont on Winhall Hollow Road! And, her parents had lived in the greater-Philadelphia area. Quite the coincidence. She had been in Utah for 14 years, but among people she knew back there were Scott Howe and builder Steve Moody. How we never had met before is quite amazing in itself. Beverly had worked at Stratton but it was a year or two after I had left there for Sugarbush. 

As comedian Steven Wright once said: “It’s a small word, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”