Finally, a solution for Little Cottonwood Canyon?

In recent years, accessing Snowbird and Alta, in Little Cottonwood Canyon, near Salt Lake City has become a huge traffic nightmare, with a narrow road without any avalanche protection, like what is common in the Alps, and with limited parking at the ski areas. 

The avalanche protection should have been put in place in the early 70s when Snowbird opened, but the State of Utah was too cheap to bite the bullet, and too ignorant to understand anything about avalanche mitigation. 

Today, two solutions are considered. An expanded bus service with road widening, or a 3S-type, 32 passenger gondola.

The bus option would be the fastest, getting people up the mountain in about 37 minutes, including parking and walking to the bus stop. Buses would pick riders up every five minutes, but could be slowed by variable winter weather conditions. 

The option also requires widening the road the entire way up the canyon, building snow sheds to help control avalanches and requiring cars to pay a toll during busy time. 

On the other hand, the gondola provides the most consistent travel times — just under an hour from parking to reaching the top — and would leave the base station every two minutes. 

While it would have a greater visual impact on the mountains, it would be less invasive to the nearby watershed, wildlife, and climbing. 

Both options would cost roughly the same over a 30-year period, that is over $500 million. They would also come with additional measures like building two park-and-ride lots close by, to handle visitors coming by car. 

My preference would go to the gondola in spite of its visibility defacing the Canyon’s natural beauty.

 

A trip at the Olympic Park

The Utah Olympic Park was built for the 2002 Winter Olympics, and is located about 7 miles north of our Park City home. 

During the games it was used for the bobsleigh, skeleton, luge, ski jumping, and Nordic combined events. The State of Utah is doing all it can to generate activity and revenue with an infrastructure that, too often, becomes an expensive white elephant once the games are over. 

Just the total cost of the park came up at $75 million! 

It still serves a training center for Olympic and development level athletes, as well as a recreational facility for visitors. 

Other facilities in addition to the ski jumps and bobsled track located on site include the Joe Quinney Winter Sports Center that houses the Alf Engen Ski Museum and the Eccles Salt Lake 2002 Olympic Winter Games Museum, a day lodge, a summer aerial training splash pool, ziplines, and a mountain coaster.

On July 31, we went to watch the 2022 U.S. Ski Jumping Championships on the 120-134m large hill, and enjoyed the limited time we spent there. 

Truth be known, I had never been to the Nordic jumps to watch athletes jump, and it was well worth driving over. It was fun to experience, and next year, if I’m still in good shape might compete too!

Revisiting the Church of Dirt

Last year, I explained in that blog what the “Church of Dirt” in Park City was and, on a couple of occasions, I had the opportunity of hiking by it this season.

It’s still “standing” as one could say, but is becoming increasingly popular and transact some serious wedding volume. 

During the entire Covid-19 pandemic, it kept on offering a popular alternative to indoor weddings when gatherings were limited and people were advised to keep six feet distance, but it’s done more than that; it’s becoming an affordable place to tie the knot in a place invaded by the rich and famous and where real-estate prices have become totally unreal. 

As in the past, there’s still no official way to book the location as everything’s run on the honor system. Couples write their name down in a planner and leave a rock or piece of wood claiming a date and time for their special day. 

Interviewed by le local radio station, Cassie Crook got married at the Church of Dirt and said she was drawn to the location because of the views. "It's really cool to like save money," she said. "That's the thing that was for us. We're like, 'man, if we could only get ski resort views for no ski resort price' ... because anywhere else, Deer Valley is probably around $12,000 just for the venue. So it's one of those things where it's like you to get the same views, but just without maybe some of the resorts amenities."

The radio mentioned that Deer Valley wedding venues range in cost, with the most affordable option starting at $6,000 for the just the ceremony at Cushings Cabin. So here you have it: Dirt-cheap wedding venue next to multi-million dollars home. 

Nothing capture as well the contrast and contradictions as well as the huge wealth gap that’s growing in good old Park City!

A first trip ‘round the world, part 37

One of the best ski hills, within the Blue Lift network was the one served by Bull Run, a south facing lift with good quality snow when there was enough of it, serving a large, funnel-shaped bowl with a vertical drop of about 787 ft with a variety of good and fun run like Wood, Funnel, Plug Hole, Sun Valley (my favorite) and the token Men’s and Women’s Downhill trails. 

Because it offered the greatest vertical drop among the Blue and Orange Lifts, it could accommodate Alpine FIS competition (both Slalom and Giant Slalom) and welcome a few European squads in quest of improving their FIS ranking while training during their summer break. 

Gérard recalls that he was involved with helping on the race course when these events happened in August. “The Slalom took place” he said, “but the GS was cancelled. It had rained and the base wasn’t there; the Austrian squad kept on training though…” 

When snow became harder after, a cold spell, skiing could be fun and fast there, particularly on Sun Valley! 

Gérard also fondly remember. a half-day spent training GS on Bull Run, with Malcolm Milne, the Australian downhill champion, just prior the 1972 Olympic season. Interestingly, In December 1969 at Val-d'Isère, Milne became the first Australian skier to win a World Cup event! 

Two months later, Milne won the bronze medal at the Val Gardena World Championships downhill… Not bad for an Aussie! 

Today, the original Dopplemayr T-bar that we rode back up in 1971 was replaced in 1984 by a fixed-grip, quad chair from the same supplier.

Is there smoke without fire?

Friday became a super smoky day as we finished our morning walk. First we were very concerned and thought that heavy smoke choking Park City was due to some local fire, but in fact, it came from fires burning hundreds of miles away in Oregon and Northern California.

In fact, a cold front making its way across the west brought with it smoke from these wildfires that spread into town and might stay with us this Saturday. 

According to IQAir, which tracks real-time air quality all over the globe, Salt Lake City had the worst air quality in the world Friday, beating Dubai in the UAE and Kabul, in Afghanistan. 

Another dubious record to remember if, in the meantime, we can stay alive and keep breathing by staying indoors until the air clears!

Review of Bill Gates’ book on climate

Just before his marital problems surfaced, Bill Gates had introduced his book “How to avoid a climate disaster” on the various American radio and TV talk shows. 

It probably would have been more successful had his troubled marriage not thrown a monkey-wrench into his work. Still, it sounded both intriguing and interesting, so I decided to read it. 

In it, Gates explains what’s happening with greenhouse gases and brushes up a pretty strong case for completely getting rid of them by 2050. 

Yet, like the rest of the so-call experts in the field, he totally ignores the real cause of all the ills that are causing pollution and global warming, namely the planet overpopulation. 

He’s a businessman who believes that quantity of people is what keep the economy afloat, regardless of what a more qualitative measurement could contribute positively. He also counts on governments to take the lead at implemented the policies he advocates. Good luck with that one too. 

In summary, some great information about the subject, some good intentions in terms of tackling the problem, but a systematic denial of what messes up the planet: Continuing to add too many polluting humans into its limited space!

Going to the ballet!

Ever since we’ve lived in Utah, we knew about Ballet West, Salt Lake City’s famous ballet company founded in 1963 and performing at the Capitol Theater. 

Today, it ranks 11th among the top 50 ballet companies in the United States, yet we’ve never seen any performance until last night as we always thought this kind of entertainment was stuffy, musty and dusty. 

On top of that, driving down to Salt Lake and returning home at night is not something we particularly enjoy doing. 

But circumstances last night were different; Ballet West came up to perform in Park City, a 24 minutes walk from our home, so we went, and had a wonderful time. 

We saw three pieces: 

The thing with feathers, choreographed by Emily Adams on a music by Katy Jarzebowski, The solo year, choreographed by Matthew Neenan on a music by Pietro Locatelli and Piece of my heart, choreographed by Nicolo Fonte on Janis Joplin’s songs. 

In fact, we liked it so much that we’ll return next time Ballet West comes to town!