Park City
Saturday 15 February 2003

Weather

Conditions

Story of the Day

The last day of the holiday and we still had some runs that we had not skied during the week and for the final morning, we set ourselves the challenge of riding all of the lifts in the resort, once only, which certainly gave some focus to the final day.

First Time was the obvious starting point, because the lift starts before the rest.

Being Saturday and a holiday weekend, there was the risk of long queues later in the day on Three Kings and no Fast Track line, so it made sense to knock this one off early.

I was a little worried about Willy's Run because of the warmer weather on the previous day and the overnight freezing. Still we had not skied the run and we needed to ride Ski Team. The run itself was OK. Because it is difficult to get to in the week because Ski Team only runs at the weekends, there was a covering of fresh powder on top of the moguls and this had insulated the moguls somewhat from the frost.

The run out was another kettle of fish. That HAD been skied on the previous day and was frozen crud .. Horrible!

09:18 The top of Ski Team lift	Chris at the top of Ski Team lift	Looking down from the top of Ski Team
Chris at the top of Willy's Run

By the time we got to the top of Eagle we were getting into the tour of the mountain and on track to get all the way round by lunchtime. Temptation was groomed but with ice not far below the surface.

09:38 The top of Eagle lift	Looking across to Pay Day from the bottom of King Kon Ridge	The top of Eagle lift
The choice of runs at the top of Eagle	Commemorating the 2002 Olympics	Chris at the top of Temptation

With the choice of runs, our only option if we wanted to avoid repeating King Con lift, was the short run down King Con to the bottom of Silverlode.

09:47 The top of King Con lift

Choice of runs from King Con Ridge

From the Summit, we headed down toward the bottom of McConkey's Lift, taking the easy way down "Webster", past Mid Mountain Lodge.

09:55 The top of Silverlode lift	The Summit area .. the tree in the middle seems to have attracted a very localised storm	Choice of runs at the top of Silverlode
	Heavy snow on this tree at the Summit

We did have a choice of runs from the top of McKonkey's Lift. In the end we chose the most difficult option, McKonkey's Bowl itself. We entered the bowl very high, from just to the left of the lift, with a couple of truns in the powder in the trees and then across into the bowl. The bowl was OK, but nowhere near as good as earlier in the week, with unpredictable conditions and rocks.

10:04 The top of McKonkey's lift	Chris at the top of McKonkey's bowl	Mike & Chris at the top of McKonkey's bowl

10:13 Mid Mountain area	The queue for McKonkey's lift	10:20 The top of Pioneer lift
	McKonkey's Bowl from the top of Pioneer lift

The run from the top of Jupiter Lift was probably the best run if the week. We turned right at the top of the lift and traversed across Portugese Gap, with a couple of turns to lose height and then cut through the trees to the edge of Scott's Bowl. The snow was in great condition with just enough soft powder on top. We were tempted to go back and do the run again, but it would probably not have been as good the second time.

10:32 The top of Jupiter lift

From the top of Thaynes, we took Single Jack and Lower Single Jack to get to Motherlode lift. The lower part was not at all pleasant, with a very crispy surface.Being Saturday, Motherlode lift was operating. By 11:15 we were back at the Summit area and well on schedule to complete the circuit before lunch.

10:48 The top of Thaynes lift	The top of Thaynes lift	The top of Thaynes lift
Looking over the top of Blueslip Bowl	Choice of runs above the Summit House	Summit House
Motherlode lift	Looking towards Jupiter Bowl from Motherlode lift	Looking towards Jupiter Bowl from Motherlode lift
Looking towards Jupiter Bowl from Motherlode lift	Thanes lift and Jupiter Bowl from Motherlode lift	Jupiter Bowl from Motherlode lift
Motherlode lift	11:12 The top of Motherlode lift	The Summit area

We needed to have one ride up Bonanza lift. Rather than follow the crowds down Home Run, we cut off down the relatively shory Belmont with its moguls. No real problems.

Once more back at the Summit, we took the familiar route down to the base area via Home Run and the easy black Silver Queen, leaving us with just 2 lifts to do to complete the circuit, Payday and Town.

We reached the top of Payday with plenty of time to spare. The run down to the bottom of Town was a comfortable cruise.

11:43 The top of Payday lift

Chris at the top of Pay Day run

Town Lift is very slow, taking more than 12 minutes. The morning had a little sting in the tail. For the last run before lunch, we cut down the bottom half of Nail Driver. This turned out to be pretty unpleasant, partly frozen and with lots of rocks showing.

The bottom of Town Lift	The bottom of Town Lift	The bottom of Town Lift
12:01 The top of Town Lift	The top of Town Lift	The top of Treasure Hollow

After lunch, John decided that he wanted to come with us (on his snowboard). It turned out that he had not made quite as much progress as he had led us to believe. Down Treasure Hollow we made slow but steady progress.

John snowboarding in Treasure Hollow	John snowboarding in Treasure Hollow	John snowboarding in Treasure Hollow
John snowboarding in Treasure Hollow		John snowboarding in Treasure Hollow

John declared himself ready to go anywhere, so we headed up to the top of the mountain via Ski Team and Silverlode and then down the slightly more challenging Single Jack.

John spent all of the week down at the bottom of the resort, so we tried to give him a taste of the higher elevations by heading across to McConkey's lift and the cruise along the ridge.

By this time, John was getting extremely tired and fell several times. Half way down the slope he decided that enough was enough and at the bottom he left us and headed back down to the base.

Meanwhile, we still had one run that we had not skied at all during the week. Although marked on the map, 1/4 Load was not really a run. To get to it, we needed to gain speed down Homerun and walk a little way uphill to get to the sign for the run. It was clear that it has not been treated as a run at all during the season. There was powder on top of an uneven base, with very few tracks.

To finish off the day, we did some high speed cruising from Silverlode taking advantage of our Fast Track ticket to avoid the queues.

For our last run of the day, we headed left from the top of Silverlode and keeping high headed for the top of the face to the left of Home Run as you ski down. We had never skied this relatively short face before and from the top it looked challenging, quite steep and with variable conditions. In fact it was a very comfortable ski, with much better snow than it appeared from the top. After that the trip to the bottom followed a familiar path.

It was a great week. Chris and I succeeded in skiing every marked trail on the mountain and also in skiing every lift in sequence in a single morning. We had days with a lot of vertical and some challenging runs in powder in McKonkey's Bowl and Jupiter Bowl. We benefited from the lack of crowds in the week before the main holiday week and also from cheaper ski rental. Sue had a good week and skied a lot more than she intended at the start. Clare did not have a good week. For whatever reason, she didn't do much boarding at all. John must have wished that he had stayed on skis.

Runs

Last updated: 05/11/03