Skiing day 2.....SINGLE!

Woke up this morning looked out the door and seen blue skies! No late night text from anyone wanting to hit a lake or bunny hunt so I decided to get on the mountain. Sundance Ski Resort is my home town resort, growing up there and working through high school as a parking lot attendant. Eight my friends and I all did this to get season passes, lets just say there was more skiing in the winter than school work, luckily I had teachers that understood the draw to the mountains. This morning, like I said, was Bluebird sky and no wind, colder than Hades, 6* at base. That just meant that the snow loss water content and fluffed up, much to my surprise there wasn't a lot of new snow from Tuesday to today, even though we had a large snow storm on Christmas. Sundance is that way with northerly storms it is hit and miss when they come out of the north. Storms from the south however is the time to have your powder boards ready to go, Sundance will get slammed with Utah's finest Champagne Powder. I made first chair this morning with another rider and we made it to back mountain after brake checks and learner stops by 9:10 and first run commenced. Today was a cruiser day, turned on the ipod and listened to some tunes and rode the Corduroy for some speed. I did hit one crud run and decided not today, broken, choppy and heavy off the groomed, I just relaxed and carved turns. I made seven runs before the lines got long and my legs were tired. Seven runs by 10:30 was pretty good and I didn't feel like standing in lines today, so I called it good and headed for home. Stopped at the parents house and visited for a while and was home by noon. Great morning on the mountain.

Fishing Christmas Eve

Our annual fishing trip on Christmas eve to celebrate Mac’s birthday took us to Mammoth/Huntington Reservoir at the top of Huntington Canyon. Parker and I met Craig and Gary at the lake. We arrived about 7:30, they had been there since 6:30, good thing we got out late though Craig forgot his bibs, so we picked them up for him. Craig fishes on his birthday every year and we are lucky enough to be invited to join. Always a good day on the ice. Today proved no different. We set camp by the dam while they set camp out on the main body of the lake. This is a high altitude lake in the Manti La-Sals just off Skyline Drive. The ice was double layered, first crust being about three inches thick and then an eight inch layer of slush to the next layer of ice being about 12 inches thick. Parker learned quickly there were slush pockets, breaking through the first layer up to his knees in slush, never a fun feeling breaking through. We set up and got things going flasher, underwater camera, poles the morning started off great no wind and bluebird skies.

Around nine the wind started, so we flipped the tent up and watched hundreds of fish swim by our lures. They would come up to them nose them around but never hit the lures. Craig came over saying they had caught 2 and another fisher had got a couple on a green tube jig, Craig and Gary were using shrimp and worm. I switched out to a green tube and finally got a Tiger trout, even seen it hit on the camera. After that they became very jumpy, jigging and dancing the jig made them dart away. We fished until noon and after not seeing a fish on the camera for a half hour we decided to call it a day. We had a long drag off the lake with the big rig, it weighs approximately 300 lbs loaded. Luckily another fisher came off with us and offered to help drag it up the ramp with all 3 of us we finally got it to the parking lot. We talked with him for few minutes and his group hadn’t caught anything all morning. It was definitely not hot fishing, but we figured out our underwater camera and what we need to make it work well. We had a great day on the ice, Craig and Gary ended up catching a few fish, they stayed until late afternoon. We went into Fairview and had lunch at the local burger joint, it was pretty good and okay on the price.

Ski Day!

Spin drifts were flowing this morning off the peaks as we loaded up the truck for the days adventure to Sundance.  We got on the road at 8:15, stopped and got some breakfast and were at the mountain by 8:45.  Stopped at the ticket window and picked up a pass for Parker and were on the lift by 9:05. That was after we had to adjust his skis for his boots I picked up his mothers skis for him thinking they were his.  It's been a while since Parker was skiing with me 3 years in fact.  But we made it through that.  The day was absolutely perfect, blue bird skies, no wind and some powder to be had.  This was the first day of the season for me as well, hopefully quite a few more to come.  The only issue we need snow badly!!  The groomed runs were okay but still tons of under growth poking through the snow.  We made it to back mountain by 9:30 and were skiing.  We took mostly cruiser runs for the day but made a couple short pitches in the calf deep powder from the storm that rolled through yesterday.  We had a blast and skied 6 runs before we had to head for home, and our legs were fried.  Plus the lines were getting horrible the last run we had to wait almost 20 minutes to load. Not good for a small resort and the top of front mountain was not open making us go down the back trail to the bottom which isn't pleasant especially on tired legs, lots of flats.  The ski season isn't starting off well for any resort due to lack of snow.  That doesn't bode well for the coming summer and water supplies, Jordanelle never did fill this summer and will remain well below capacity without some huge storms coming through.  Skiing for the day was great it was nice to have my mountain partner back with me for the day.  I wish I had a Jacuzzi right now, that's all I'm saying.  Forgot the camera at the truck sorry no picks or videos today.