Park City Utah Febrruary 2019
This was my second year for this annual ski trip with a large group of friends from college. I flew into Salt Lake City on Monday and came back to Chicago on early evening Saturday night. It was an action packed trip and was sad to have to come home but was very glad to get home back to my shower and my bed.
Trip Break Down:
Monday was a travel day that turned into quite a ride, to say the least. I’ve traveled quite a bit for work in my career so I have my timeline just right of how to get to the airport. An easy estimate would be over 550 flights, with most of those originating out of O’Hare airport. What I’ve never encountered on my way to the airport was a Level 2 Hazmat situation that locked me in the Loop of Chicago for over 20 minutes. I was stuck in my Uber and was not allowed to leave
After what seems like for ever I was able to exit the Uber and make my way down to the Blue line all the way to O’Hare. I made it there with 20 minutes before boarding but, it was to late to check my bag 🙁 I conceded and check my bag for the next in 4 hours. I was on standby with 14 open seats I was pretty confident that I would make the next flight to SLC. I slipped through security with no problem(Thanks TSA Pre-check) and began to walk down the gate to go grab some breakfast since i had all this time to kill.
That’s when I saw my original flight start to board. This was a sad sight and I really debated just jumping on this flight and having one of my buddies grab my bag that was
In a quick bout of depression, I came up with a great idea! The American Airlines Lounge was a clutch idea. For not a small fee ($59) you have an open bar, what I continental plus breakfast and lunch and all the brownies and cookies you can eat. Trust me the brownies are awesome and I probably have put down a whole tray of them on many a layover. #cuethestomachache
After more than a few beers and 3 or 4 handfuls of brownies, it was time for me to move to the gate to board. Flight time was a lot longer than expected, we were in the air for over 3.5 hours and my butt fell asleep hard. With the delay of getting into SLC, I had to find my own ride to my friend’s house who thankfully loved a quick Uber ride from the airport. With a fast pit stop, we packed our gear up in the truck and headed to the mountains for what was sure to be a wild week.
This trip in an annual event with a mixed group of friends from college and some girlfriends. Our housing was two conjoined condos that were mirrored and most importantly had 2 separate hot tubs to help relax those muscles after the slopes along with a bunch of beer.
Our condos were a 6 min bus ride (free) from the base of Park City which is a huge mountain that has something like 370 runs. The two days that we skied here I was only able to hit about 27 of them. I will need to come back and get a few more days here to really have a complete scope the mountain, but I would definitely recommend it.
We split the 2 days a Park City with active rest day of Snowmobiling at Thousand Peaks. This was insane experience, I highly recommend the three hour tour with a private group if you have enough people with you. I took the chance to rent the upgraded to the faster snowmobile. The 300cc sled was blazing fast and well worth the price, it had no problem charging up the hills/mountains.
The $20 dollars for insurance was an easy purchase, gave the confidence to be able go full throttle and get a little reckless on the sled. Turns out it’s a lot easier to roll one these things than you think especially when your 250 feet up a mountain and your trying to turn back down hill.
Skiing on Thursday got intense, a small group of us got together and skied our asses off for the whole day. At the end of the day, my slopes app totaled just over 18,500 feet over 16 runs. The legs were burning on the way home. I ran into some trouble after trying to slide down a double black diamond run. I was feeling pretty confident after hitting a bunch of black diamonds threw out the day. The giant moguls on almost vertical terrain way above my skill level. I had to bail on the run 1/2 way through, it just got too hard trying to surge the moguls so I took a cat track to get back to one of the bigger “easier” runs. This where one bad decision turned into a very bad situation, turns out that cat track was not really a cat track. It was an access road to my dismay, so I had to cross country ski in 6 inches of snow for about 40 min to get back civilization.
When I finally popped out of the woods it was magically next a small chair lift. I was greeted by an awestruck lift operator that said: “Where did you just come from?” I responded with “don’t ask” as I plopped on the 2 seaters and caught my breath on the slow ride back to the top of the mountain.
Thursday night was a blast and it snowed quite a bit which got us even more pumped for Powder Mountain the next day. Powder Mountain is a 90 min drive from Park City so we ha dot gets up a little early to try and make the first chair. The ride to the mountain took what felt like forever as all we could see was the deep freshly fallen snow.
As a local Mountain, they only offer 1500 lift tickets a day and at the time of when we got there was still 1100 tickets left. Except for the first lift the runs were empty. IT really felt like our group was the only ones on the mountain. The legs were sore to start the last day of our ski trip, it was only a Green run but my legs felt zapped. It took the next two runs to get my legs firing on all cylinders.
The highlight of the day was the recent deposit of 8 inches of fresh powder the night before our day at Powder Mountain. That much pow pow with on a local mountain with only 500 people in attendance gave us fresh runs all day.
For something like $25 dollars, you can purchase a one way Cat Trek ride to some backcountry lines. Half of our group participated in the Cat lift, it was a packed ride up to the top of the mountain with all the other skiers and snowboarders not in our group.
It was a funny sight having the group stumble out of the back of the Cat with our ski boots on. After we all got kitted up the guide gave the three different subgroups of abilities instructions of what routes to take and what to avoid. I paid extra special attention of what to avoid because there were some real threats in the Back Country. Hidden drop-offs and cliffs trees and rock formations that were really hidden by all the recent snowfall.
I placed myself in the intermediate subgroup and followed them down the little trail to our suggested run. We stopped at the top of the run to plan our attack with began to get daunting. Trees, bushes, rocks/boulders, and a “don’t go left there is a cliff” I was as ready as I was ever gonna be. The snow was so deep it was really hard to turn, took a few slow turns to get the jump turn that everybody talks about. In about 25 seconds it was time to negotiate some trees mixed in with rock formation. As I made it past those obstacles with way to much speed I tired another jump turn which turned into a few head over heels tumbles. Falling in that deep of snow was surrea.l. You fall down but you just sink into the powder. Everything was cushioned so there’s was zero impact with any hard surface. The closest thing I could compare it do if you fell into a ball pit with nerf bullets that were coasted in baby hair lol.
that nice powder did make it hard to get back up on my skis though which I would say is the only downside of being a crap skier on a whole mountain full of powder. That is a great motivation to learn and develop my technique before my next trip.
All in all, this is one of my favorite weeks of the year. The group of people combined with the house the activities and the mountain make for a very exciting action packed week that takes me more than a week to recover from. So worth it though, Hoping to get in at least one smaller ski trips next year to take some lessons and see how wrong I’ve been skiing this whole time lol. Can’t wait till next season!