Alta Ski Trip -- April 14-18, 2005

Excuses for skiing? I had several.

In February I assembled 50 Boy Scouts for a West Virginia ski trip that highlighted, beyond great ski conditions, my sending our Scoutmaster out to lasso and redirect our tour bus that became lost in Arlington, and a wave of dysentery-like flu that coursed the bunkhouse loaded with Scouts and adult chaperones. Exhausted by logistics management, I never slipped on skis to cut a turn.

Skiing is a passion I developed in childhood. In 1972, when I was twelve, my Godparents took me to Utah's Alta resort. It was a wonderful, sun-drenched experience, complemented by a night or two of weightless powder. When I was 17, I was horribly injured when a drunk driver ran a red light and hit my car. After emergency brain surgery, I was in a deep coma and paralyzed on my left side. Skiing then became a difficult benchmark against which I measured my recovery.

This year, I watched the mounting snow totals on Alta's web site (http://www.alta.com). By March, more than 50 feet had fallen. I am a busy guy, deeply involved in software engineering at work; my two boys' school, sports and music; and family life. My wife Carolyn and I calibrate free time on PDAs. By April, my ski feet were itchy. Almost twelve feet of snow fell on Alta since mid-March, including 31.5 inches on March 30 that temporarily closed the mountain.

With just a week before Alta's April 17 closing, I checked kitchen points with my wife, assembled discount air fares over the Internet and grabbed a "cheap" end-of-season room at Alta's Peruvian Lodge. I set my departure two days after a peer review of a complex financial engineering software project I lead. Fly out Thursday, ski three days, and fly back Monday -- a long weekend escape.

The Alta Peruvian is a remarkable lodge. It has changed little since my visit 33 years earlier. Nestled 8,500 feet high in Utah's Wasatch range, it caters to serious skiers (snowboarding is not allowed at Alta). The rooms are Spartan -- bunk dorms, two bed "Nordic" units with a wash basin, and more "luxurious" units with private bath. A lot of skiers come to the Peruvian by themselves, but they are not alone. Meals are served family style. Over my first breakfast and ensuing meals, I fell into a comfortable cohort of fascinating individuals. Michael, a senior executive with a large European bank, regaled us with stories of his ski ventures to Portillo, Chile, the Alps and Killington, Vermont. Bob, who described himself as "just a plumber from Louisiana," painted expressive stories of his ski ventures down legendary runs in British Columbia, Taos, New Mexico, and elsewhere. Bob, now in his mid-sixties, told of huge crashes where he flipped "rag doll" down a precarious run, leaving his equipment spread across the mountain in a "garage sale." Greg, a New York biotech executive, and his friend Jennifer, a personal trainer with Equinox, and Tim, an MIT Sloan school MBA student and Mad River Glen ski patroller, comprised the under-forty segment of our Peruvian family.

Perhaps most interesting among my Peruvian cohort was James, a recovering alcoholic and fundamentalist Christian in his late forties. About fifteen years ago, James was an international speed skier. Descending at 138 miles per hour, James said, "something happened." When he woke up, after an airlift to the hospital, James found he had two broken legs, with one tibia shattered into 28 pieces. James spent three years in a wheel chair. Upon arriving at the Peruvian, James learned that the North American Gelande ski jumping championship was being held at Snowbird, across the ridge from Alta. (A number of the Gelande competitors -- including the current world champion -- were holed-up at the Peruvian.) James entered the amateur competition.

Gelande jumping is like regular, Nordic ski jumping except you use Alpine ski equipment, where the boot heels do not lift up from the skis. James borrowed a pair of long skis, and soared 150 feet in his early round. It was, James noted, "further than I did when I was 12, the last time I jumped." I saw in James a compatriot who measured today against yesterday, across a chasm of grave injury. James was extraordinary, not only jumping far over the snow, but barreling down the legendary Pipeline chute, after hiking an hour to the 11,489' summit of Snowbird's Twin Peak.

When it comes to skiing I am no James. I am an expert, but an "in bounds" expert. At 45, I ski tight but carefully controlled "Sss's" down the black expert and blue intermediate slopes. Occassionally, with some peril, I venture down the double black super expert slopes. Last spring I skied Snowbird with my 10 and 13 year old snowboarding sons. With my older boy, Nathan, I ventured onto a double black chute below the monstrous Pipeline James conquered. Nathan shot down before me and stopped to watch. I fell up between the rocks and rag-dolled about two hundred yards down the mountain, sliding on wet snow like a slippery trout. I was fine. Recognizing my exhaustion (and wearing more comfortable snowboard boots), Nathan hiked up the chute to recover gear left out by my garage sale. Skiing is a neat way to bond parent and child.

To me, Alta is the perfect place to ski. It is high and quiet, intensely focused on good skiing. Seven chairlifts serve two thousand-plus acres. The landscape features huge bowls, open mountain sides, and pathways through evergreens. And there is "the world's greatest snow," an accurate moniker reported in skiing magazines. During my mid-April foray, on the last day of Alta's season, there were sixteen feet of snow underfoot. Two days after I left, Alta's bowls captured 23.5" additional powder.

Spring skiing is different. Excessive sunburn is a danger. Nighttime temperature when I arrived was 14 degrees Fahrenheit. The next day's high was 48 degrees. The mountain awakens slowly. You just don't want to go out, go up and ski. Be patient. Yesterday's soft snow is frozen into an unskiable, bullet-proof crust. Have coffee. Enjoy breakfast with friends. Let the sun work. My first runs were always on the machine worked "groomers" served by Alta's Sugarloaf lift, starting after 10 o'clock. These gentle blue and black runs helped to loosen my body. My spirit was immeasurably uplifted by Nature's beauty, the rugged high peaks, bright shining snow and bluebird sky. The snow softened to a consistency known as corn, where the kernels push easily aside as your skis carve. As the sun worked, and before the corn became mush, I moved from Sugarloaf to Alta's central, north-facing Sunshine Bowl, served by the Wildcat and Collins lifts. Over my few days I spent many an hour cavorting in this immense bowl, wandering across its central acres and cutting down its steep sides and head wall. I reprised my youth.

For 33 years, I held locked in memory images of my shooting across Sunshine Bowl, joyous and carefree. Now across my chasm of injury and years of toil, I was there again, aged and less energetic, but skiing nimbly with ever greater skill. The sky was blue and heaven was smiling.

I returned to the Peruvian, and looked up to the mountain. Celebrants were closing Alta. After dosing beer and other high-altitude medicine, costumed revelers would ascend and ski down Rustler, a mighty steep and long chute that dropped to the base of the mountain. Many wore goofy costumes -- a man wearing a pink old-West saloon matron's gown, women with flame orange wigs, another with a metal frame handicap walker about his waist, a guy wearing nothing but a diaper ... What joy!

The spirit of Alta is immense. I'll be back -- soon. Then, I hope, I too will ski Rustler, a higher benchmark.

Snowbird, Redux top

Snowbird and Alta are interconnected. You can ski both on one joint lift ticket. On my last day, Sunday, I crossed to the 'Bird, starting in the gigantic, south facing Mineral Basin section of the resort. After skiing several warm-up runs, I crossed to the main front and repeated the run near where I fell the year before with Nathan. With better snow, and an improved line, I did fine. No falls and mostly easy cruising. I ran the tram a couple times, coursing more than 15,000 feet vertical in a couple hours before returning to Alta. Snowbird is bigger than Alta, and has more, more difficult runs -- but my heart remains over the ridge.

Logistics top

My base cost was a little north of $900. Three nights/days at the Peruvian were just under $500, including lift tickets and three meals a day (dinners at the Peruvian were superb). Getting cheap airfare on the Internet can be like chasing dust bunnies. Because I booked late, I couldn't find a discount, direct fare from Washington to Salt Lake City. However, Delta runs cheap non-stop flights to Salt Lake from Boston and New York. I picked up a round trip ticket from JFK to SLC for $256; and I flew Independence Air from Dulles to JFK for $79 each way. Above this base, I paid for a shuttle between SLC airport and Alta, four hours of private instruction, and tchotchkes for the kids and a coat for Carolyn.

Alta is very accessible. The shuttle ride from the airport is about 40 minutes. I met a number of Easterners who ski Alta for the weekend, some enjoying their "once a month" tonic.

Links top