Park City
Sunday 9 February 2003

Weather

Conditions

Story of the Day

This was the first day of the family ski holiday 2003. After a break of 2 years we were back at Park City. The family this time comprised Sue and I, Chris, John and John's girlfriend Claire.

For Sue, the objective was to get back to skiing. For several years the ski trip was dominated by school reports, and in 2001/2002 in Meribvel, she did not ski at all.

For John and Claire, this was snowboarding for the first time

Chris and I set ourselves the objective of skiing every lift served run in Park City.

I was already in the US on business. The others flew out on Saturday 8th February, arriving at 10:30 pm at Salt Lake City airport. Jet lag meant that we were all up and ready to go at 7:30 am on Sunday. For the first time, we were renting equipment at the resort rental centre, rather than down in the valley. That worked well. Our multi-day lift tickets entitled us to "Fast Track" passes, which meant getting photographs taken. With all of this we were ready to go when the lifts opened. John and Claire were booked onto a Beginners Snowboard lesson; Sue was going to see how she got on; Chris and I headed up the mountain.

Even on First Time lift it was brutally cold. The sun was shining, but the tempearture was below 20°F. Because of expected crowds (which never materialised), Chris and I headed deep into the resort to the Pioneer and McKonkey's area.

The runs off the North side of Pioneer lift had been closed for a period until the storm that left almost 2 feet of fresh snow about 5 days before we arrived. When we tried Red Fox, supposedly graded blue, we could see why. The run had not seen a grooming machine for a while and was heavily mogulled. There was grass showing through in the troughs between the bumps .. hardly a 54" base! We got down but it was not fun.

Up McKonkey's lift, our first run was down the blue Buckeye/Sunrise combination to the right of the lift. This was horrible at the top, steep with enormous hard moguls and rocks showing, not exactly an Intermediate run!

Chris at the top of Buckeye

Chris at the top of Buckeye

Back up McKonkey's we turned left along Tycoon which runs along the top of the ridge before dropping quite steeply back to the bottom of the lft. This run was a delight, so much so that we repeated it before continuing on.

We had arranged to meet Sue around min-morning, so we took the old and slow Pioneer lift and then a cruise down to the base area. It was interesting to compare the mild and groomed Silver Queen black run with the fearsome mogulled blues on McKonkey's. Even within the resort it was not really possible to compare run gradings.

We were glad of a break to warm-up. It was still brutally cold.

When we first came to Park City we did the runs down to town, but never since. If we were to cover every run on the mountain, we needed to do some runs we would not normally contemplate. Creole was beautifully groomed and took us to the new bridge which enabled skiing over the road to the bottom of Town Lift.

Town Lift is exactly the same was it was when we first visited in 1991 - a slow three seater chair. It is interesting in that it parallels the line of an old conveyer line from silver mining days, and is very high to enable it to cross over Pay Day lift.

To get down to the bottom, we cut across Drift and then the lower part of Widow Maker which was in pretty poor condition, with bare earth and grass showing through in places.

The bottom of Town lift

The bottom of Town lift

The biggest challenge in achieving our objective of covering all of the runs in the resort was the set of runs from the overlooking the resort. Ski Team lift only runs at weekend. We noticed that Silver King had been groomed, so decided we could knock that off on our first day.

The track across from the top of the lift was in good condition, which was more than we could say for the run. There was an enormouse bare patch about half way down.

Chris at the top of Ski Team

Looking down towards Park City from the top of Ski Team

Lunch was an error of judgment. For many years we have frequented Moose's bar in the Plaza, knowing that there were outside heaters for cold days. We all agreed to meet there for lunch, but for some reason, there was no heating and we got very cold.

Sue had a good morning .. obviously the hours in the gym worked .. so she decided to take a lesson in the afternoon. John and Claire finished their lesson, and were planning to go out on their own after lunch.

When Chris and I set off for the afternoon, I was so cold that I needed to rseort to hand warmers. One good piece of news was the lack of crowds .. There were no queues for any of the lifts, we didn't need out Fast Track tickets.

The base area at Lunch Time

After lunch, Chris and I headed up Eagle to the King Con area to start to knock off some of the runs off King Con lift. Temptation was in great condition, but as we rode up King Con, it was clear that conditions on most of the runs was poor, with insufficient snow for grooming and bare spots visible. Only the runs near the top were able to be groomed.

We started with Shamus, which was groomed and the continued on to Eureka which was not. The top was mogulled but OK, lower down there was plenty of vegetation showing through.

Another group of runs needing planning were those down the backside from the Summit, because Motherlode chair only operates at weekends.

We started the process by taking Single Jack and the ungroomed Lower Single Jack. Of all the black runs we took on day 1, this was probably the one in the best condition.

We followed up with Parley's Park and Carbide Cut and the run down the length of Parley's Canyon down to the chair.

Looking down Broadway from the Snow Hut

Looking up Prospector and Silverload lift

After our afternoon break, we took a run down Prospector face, one of the easier blacks, especially when recently groomed.

During the week, we varied our runs down to the resort to take all of the available routes. Our route on day 1, cut across to Crescent, no longer served by it's own lift. Although there were moguls, the snow was fine and we got down comfortably.

The Summit area	The tree where we waited for afternoon ski school	Crescent run

To finish off the day, we went across to First Time to look for the others. On our first trip up and down, we didn't see anyone. Going up Three Kings we saw Sue sitting on First Time and skiing down, found her with her lesson group. We took one more run up First Time and skied down to the base to wait for the others.

Chris on First Time	Sue in her lesson at the top of First Time	Looking across to Pay Day

The flags at the base area	First Time lift	First Time run and the bottom of Pay Day and Kings Crown
The Base area from Three Kings lift	Trees along First Time .. No porcupine

So we skied right up to the end of day 1. Sue managed a three hour lesson. (I don't think John and Claire did much snowboarding in the afternoon).

Runs

Last updated: 16/02/2003