NateAlta today ended their longest summer break from lift operations since its inception 83 years ago. This has been the strangest of years but Alta felt almost normal. People were distancing, some riding solo up Collins, or double like we did, and 99% of skiers were following the mask rules in the lift lines. But other than those two small differences, skiing was skiing, and it felt good to be normal again. Unfortunately the skiing kinda sucked, but we can’t blame coronavirus for that.
There was definitely some hard snow, and of course early season hazards everywhere. To be honest, it looks bleak up there, not a lot of snow yet anywhere in Utah. But what we definitely noticed was that high up the snow was actually pretty good, the warming last week did not effect it. Fred’s Trees had the best snow today. Lots of hazards but soft snow to find throughout the run. Tower 10 was open to High Boy but as you can see, the path is rocky and dirty and hazardous. The snow out there wasn’t nearly as good as Fred’s so we didn’t do a 2nd lap.
All in all a really good opening day. Just to enjoy some fresh air and get the heart pumping was well worth it. Let’s all pray for snow we desperately need it!