Park City
Saturday 14 February 2004

Weather

Conditions

Story of the Day

The day started with the sun shining, but wisps of cloud giving a hint of what was to come. We had to check out of our condo before skiing, but still arrived at Park City before the lifts opened at 8:30.

When we arrived it was obvious that there would be lots of people around. Chris and I were undecided about our plan for the day. Our first idea was to head across to Jupiter Bowl to check the snow conditions. Being lazy, we did not want to walk uphill to Pay Day, so we took our usual route up the mountain via Eagle.

At the top of Eagle, Temptation was beautifully groomed as usual, but like most of the runs from King Con Ridge was mostly in shadow, so we decided to cross over to Silverlode where the sun was shining. The temperature was already a little higher than on previous days, with no threat of frostbite when cruising.

The run down King Con face was a little more exciting than usual. My ski slipped near the bottom and I managed to demolish the Slow Skiing sign. This was to be the only mishap of the whole day.
 

Choice of runs at the top of Eagle

Strange shaped cloud above Prospector

We decided to take several warm up runs from Silverlode, while there were no queues. On about the second run, we firmed up on a plan for the day. Remembering that McConkey's Bowl was not pleasant on Friday and that there had not been any fresh snow, we decided to stick to cruising and see how much vertical we could clock up during the day. On a holiday weekend, that would take planning, to use mostly express lifts and to avoid queues. We did have the advantage of Fast Track tickets for some of the lifts. We managed 4 runs from Silverlode before stopping for a comfort break and the switched to King Con.

We set ourselves the target of "beating the chair" and getting a lower number each time. For the first three runs, we had no problems at all with queues. For the last two runs, the queues started to build up and we used the singles line to get ahead. After 5 runs, we stopped for a drink. 13560 feet by mid morning, was a good start to the day.

Runs under King Consolidated	Broadway and Prospector
Action photographer

After the break, we switched to Silverlode where the queues were beginning to build up. Our Fast Track tickets helped us get to the front of the "maze" but we were still queuing for several minutes each time. One of the lift attendants was very efficient in organising people into groups of six. However, people were not very co-operative at the front of the line and frequently people did not go when it was their turn. Gradually, the waits got longer and the number of times the lift stopped because of ski school (actually snowboarders) falling off at the top increased, so after two runs down, we switched to Bonanza.

First time up Bonanza, there was a large queue. Obviously the lift had stopped for a while, because on subsequent runs, there was no queue at all. The queue did not matter, because Fast Track took us almost to the front of the line. We managed three runs before it was time to head to the base area for lunch.

The session between coffee break and lunch was a little disappointing. We only added 5976 vertical feet. We were hoping for at least 2 more runs to get towards 10000 for the session.

After lunch we continued the quest for vertical and no queues. After three runs from King Consolidated we moved around the mountain to get some variety before ending up doing 5 fast runs from Silverlode to bring the total vertical to 39,075: a distance we will probably never beat.

Competition day on Eagle Superpipe

Note the 4x4 at the top of the hill

Runs

Last updated: 7th February 2007