Deer Valley
Wednesday 23 February 2000

Sue had baseline assessments to complete, so we headed straight to Deer Valley for breakfast and claimed a corner where Sue could set up her laptop. Breakfast was definitely a higher quality than Mt. Air cafe, but needed to be at double the price.

Weather conditions were pretty awful all day, with intermittent snow, sometimes heavy and clouds threatening the higher elevation. Snow conditions were pretty good with fresh powder everywhere. The grooming machines had been active overnight [Map, List], but every run had 6" - 9" of fresh snow.

As soon as the lifts were open, Chris John and I headed straight for Bald Mountain and the fresh powder and within a couple of minutes on Legal Tender, all three of us had fallen. After a few more runs with increasing amounts of powder, we moved across to Flagstaff Mountain.

Eventually, I was set up and Chris and John followed me into the trees, but not along the same line.

At this point the camera packed up. It wouldn't take photographs, nor would it retract its lens .. turned out that its batteries were frozen.

At the end of the morning, we took the moguls of Know You Don't and Champions down to lunch.

After lunch, Chris and I decided to ski all five mountains of Deer Valley to give us something to aim for in worsening conditions.

1. First of all, we took Carpenter Express to the top of Bald Eagle Mountain and then the easy cruises of Navigator and Deer Hollow over to the new Deer Crest area.
   
2. The slow Deer Crest fixed quad took us to the top of Deer Crest, where we took the long cruise of Jordanelle, steep in parts and icy in parts, right down to the level of the road to Heber City where the Jordanelle Express Gondola climbs above the new condo developments back to Deer Crest.
   
3. To get to mountain number 3 we had to return to Snow Park Lodge and take Carpenter Express to Bald Eagle Mountain, and then McHenry run and Wasatch Express lift to the summit of Bald Mountain.
   
4. The painfully slow Quincy triple lit took us almost to the top of Flagstaff Mountain, and a cruise down Hawkeye and Northstar Express took us the 20 or so vertical metres higher to the summit and the welcome rest rooms!
   
5. Bandana, the run down towards the Empire Canyon area is marked green on the map. With solid ice at one point it was a little more challenging than that. We duly took Empire to the top of Empire Canyon to complete the set of 5 mountains, but one run was enough to convince us that conditions were even worse than in the morning.

Five mountains completed, we headed back towards the base area via Ruby and Flagstaff Mountain, pushing along the almost flat track underneath Quincy lift to ski Gumby Glade on the way down.

By this time it was snowing heavily and even on the runs down to Snow Park centre, visibility was closing in.

The event proved a little too much for Teddy. He seemed rather overwhelmed by the menu and didn't eat any of the barbecued chicken.