Another Weekend in Powtown!

We thought last weekend was great (and it was), but MLK weekend took us to another level of Wasatch POWTOWN. Our mountains picked up around 2.5 feet of snow over the latter part of the week and over the weekend, which created sensational backcountry skiing conditions. With avalanche danger slightly elevated, we stuck to sensible terrain in Silver Fork both days this weekend and ended up having some of our best days in years. Saturday was overcast but the snow was light, and then the clouds parted on Sunday (after an overnight refresher storm).

Needless to say, our stoke level is through the roof right now!

Here's the snow report summary of the past two weeks that I screen-grabbed this morning, followed by photos from the weekend...

Saturday January 16th

Sunday January 17th

An actual winter day in Silver Fork!

Wow - it actually snowed this weekend (finally!), and was cold enough to justify putting on a jacket for the first time in about a month. Hopefully this is just a preview of our upcoming Miracle March and we'll have lots of powder days the rest of the spring.

We hit the Silver Fork Meadow Chutes for the some fun laps this morning...

This video of Andrea skiing sums it up pretty well:

A video posted by Jake Krong (@jkrong) on Feb 22, 2015 at 3:14pm PST

Link to the video (if the embed code doesn't work)

And some photos - mainly skintrack stoke...

Meadow Chutes in the Spring

Spring skiing. Warm, sunshine, powder. What else do I need to say?

The following day (3/9) we went for a short tour in the Twin Lakes Pass area. Sunshine and tank tops!

Winter isn't over yet!

Andrea taking full advantage of one of this season's best ski days!

Around 6am on Sunday morning, as I was waking up to go running, I heard a snowplow making lots of noise outside. Oh yeah!!! I didn't even need to look out the window to know it was going to be one of those days. After 3 straight 70 degree days where we were wearing shorts and tanktops, old man winter said "April Fools!" and came back with a vengeance... dropping 14" of perfect, right-side-up, blower powder in the mountains. We headed up to Silver Fork, and had one of the best ski days of our lives.

We skinned about 6500 feet of vertical (only stopping at that point b/c another round of stormy weather was blowing in) and enjoyed nothing but bottomless turns on the down... Photos don't even do it justice... but here's what it looked like...


The snow-covered Aspens created a beautiful scene


Gotta get up to get down


Ripping the skins


And here we go!...




Popping up for some air








I'm in there, trying to stay afloat




The look on my face says it all


This is about as blue as the skies got... and it was still snowing


WoooooooooHooooooooo


The Aspens creating another amazing backdrop


Andrea blowing it up


Before our 5th lap, the weather turned to another whiteout, so we decided to make that the last run of the day. By the time we dropped in, another 1.5-2" of additional (SUPER LIGHT) snow had fallen, making it the best run of the day, as dozens of faceshots were linked together in the way you usually only see it in ski movies.


We skied the same zone over and over. When its that good, there's no need to explore!


Another beautiful day in the Wasatch Wonderland! :-)

A quick note on running/training... recovery from the 50K was pretty tough. It took 3-4 days for my quads to not feel completely destroyed. By Friday I felt good, then on Saturday felt terrible again, and was back to feeling good on Sunday. Somehow I managed to still run 102 miles and keep my 100+ mile/week streak going. Andrea recovered quicker, ran an impressive 2 mile "time trial" at 5K pace on Thursday, and still logged ~60 miles in 6 days.

More pictures from the April 3rd powder day on my picasa site.

A quick glance at NOAA's forecast makes me think another series of storms are brewing for this week... Bring it on!!!