Snowbasin
Friday 13 January 2006

Weather

Conditions

Story of the Day

This was my first visit to Snowbasin, the site of the 2002 Olympic downhill races. It had always seemed rather remote from Salt Lake. In the event, it took around an hour to get there, not much longer than to Brighton from Salt lake City Airport. Turning off the State Road towards Snowbasin, the runs of the resort are clearly visible. In face, the distant view shows the trail map to be pretty accurate geographically.

Two long high-speed gondolas built for the Olympics provide the main uplift capacity. As an introduction to Snowbasin, I took the Needles gondola from the base are and traversed across to the area under Strawberry Gondola. Coyote Bowl is not in fact an open bowl, but an easy groomed run along the bottom of the valley beneath the gondola.

There is very little at the top of Strawberry gondola other than a ski patrol hut and a primitive rest room .. and a stunning view across the valley and the Great Salt Lake. Almost everyone seemed to be stopping to take photographs.

Snow under Strawberry gondola	Elk Ridge run
The top of Strawberry gondola	The view across Great Salt Lake from the top of Strawberry gondola
The top of Strawberry and the valley beyond	The top of Strawberry and the valley beyond
Elk Ridge run	Elk Ridge run
Ungroomed terrain on Gordon's	Ungroomed terrain on Gordon's

From the gondola, the moguls on Sowback looked relatively easy. By the time I realised that they were frozen solid, it would have taken a lot of effort to climb back up, so I continued down. I noticed a ski patroller on a snowmobile waiting at the bottom of the face until I successfully got to easier groomed terrain.

Under Strawberry lift

Middle Bowl is a slow triple-chair from mid way up the mountain to Needles Lodge, with an interesting variety of skiing. Moose Mound is a wide open ungroomed slope, steep in a few places with one natural half-pipe. The weather was beginning to soften the snow, with the result that this was now comfortably skiable.

Needles from Middle Bowl lift

Needles from Middle Bowl lift

Snowbasin claims to have the best facilities of any resort in Utah. Certainly the day lodge at the base gives Deer Valley a run for its money and the quality of the feed at Needles Lodge is excellent.

After lunch, I moved across to the other half of the mountain (the steeper section containing the Olympic runs). Porcupine is a triple-chair that starts under Needles Express gondola and climbs sedately to somewhat higher that Needles Lodge, in a bowl dominated by the jagged points of Mount Ogden.

Unidentified groomed trail above Porcupine lift	Needles gondola
Needles gondola crosses Porcupine lift	Needles gondola crosses Porcupine lift
Mt Ogden	Mt Ogden

To finish the day, I took a couple of runs from John Paul Express a quad chair. First time up, I continued higher to the top of Mt. Allen Tram which marks the start of the Men's Downhill course. (The course itself was not maintained as a race course).

From below the top part of the run looked steep but skiable. From the top it looked steeper and mogulled. Even to reach the start of the trail meant negotiating a steep and extremely narrow field of bumps with rocks showing. Even experts seemed to be side-slipping down, so I decided that this was not for me and went back down the tram and then skied down Wildflower DH, the run which formed the Womens' Downhill course. This was groomed and apart from being pretty steep in places was an easy route down.

For my final run of the day, I took Mt. Ogden Bowl, another run which isn't really a bowl, but a comfortable run back to the base.

Tubing hill under John Paul lift	The view from the top of Mt Allen tram
The view from the top of Mt Allen tram	Looking down to the lodge from the top of Mt Allen tram
The view from the top of Mt Allen tram	The view from the top of Mt Allen tram
Mt Allen tramP061130957	Snow blowing from the top of Needles
Not groomed as an Olympic downhill run today	City Hill near the base area

A good day. Driving away from the resort, I stopped for a few minutes at the junction with SR162 to take some pictures looking back towards the resort.

The route of John Paul chair	Road junction leading to Snowbasin
Snowbasin - view from the State Road	Snowbasin - view from the State Road
Road junction leading to Snowbasin	Road junction leading to Snowbasin

Runs

Last updated: 04/02/2007