Skiing north of Hell…

In the past couple of days, I made a distinct effort to go skiing to really see how the conditions were like at Park City Mountain. On Sunday, I skied the Park City side and had some good runs around the Thaynes chairlift, and on Monday decided to check out the Canyons side and was disappointed when I realized that Ninety-nine-90 had just been shut down for avalanche danger. 

Disappointed I returned home, skiing to some of the worst slush snow ever experienced. This was almost hell, that’s why I called this episode “Slightly north of hell!” Frankly, I feel terrible for our visitors that had to ski in such terrible conditions. I looked at the Ski Utah calendar and saw that Park City was still planning to stay open for skiing until April 20, just to beat its Deer Valley neighbor by one day (it plans to shut down on April 19).

The best I can guess is that skiing will be on virtual snow (at least in Park City, that spreads the artificial white stuff as thin as it can to save money!) I also noticed that Snowbasin, out of respect for its ski patrons, already closed on April 22. 

On my last chair ride that day, I chatted with an older Indian gentleman who, based on the current conditions, thought that he wasn’t seeing much more than 5 more years of skiing in Park City, adding that “When the earth will be doomed, there will be voices saying that it took only 2,000 years for the human specie to destroy the planet… What a shame!”