A New Hope

March 24th was a happy day

After a long, hot stretch of zeros - the snow finally came back... just before I was about to lose my mind...

Thursday March 23

The advantage of daylight savings? After work powder skiing when its been snowing all day. That doesn't happen very often, but when it does, its hard to beat.

We skied 3 laps of Emma Ridge and all of a sudden, everything in life clicked back into place...

Friday March 24

Back up to Emma Ridge for a dawn patrol. We timed daybreak perfectly and since it was finally (somewhat) cold overnight, the snow was even lighter and drier than the evening before. We skied two laps before heading to work... the second lap in the sunshine was especially sublime.

Saturday March 25

Solo outing since Andrea had Bioventures. Started at Alta and did a mini Tour de Days via Flagstaff - skied the Upper Bowl, Main Days, Hideaway Park, Jaws, and then back down via Toledo Bowl. Low visibility so I didn't really take any photos. The snow was really good on the north aspects and in protected trees... everything else was combat turns.

Sunday March 26

The spring break crew arrived - my sister Jenna and cousin Andy. We took them up to Solitude for a sunshine resort day. Nice conditions in the morning and early afternoon.

Skiing is the best!

Two Shades of Solitude

Andrea is all smiles after an exhausting storm-skiing powder day

The final weekend of January was the FOURTH straight legitimate powder skiing weekend. What a month and start to 2016!

With a big storm forecasted to be blasting all day on Saturday (Jan 30) we opted to ride the lifts at Solitude Mountain Resort and take advantage of the free refills. We skied first chair to last chair and had a really fun day. We got in a TON of powder skiing. Solitude is a great place to ski on a storm day.

On Sunday (Jan 31st) we headed back to Mill D for backcountry skiing in the short swing area. We found solitude in the trees - it was quiet, calm, and peaceful... and the skiing was great, again! 

I love a good lift-served powder day, but nothing tops floating through completely untouched snow after earning every turn... and then putting the skins back on and doing it again, and again, and again...

Jan 30th - Solitude Mountain Resort

Jan 31st - Mill D, Big Cottonwood Canyon

Outdoor Retailer SkiMo Race

Andrea and I were able to head up to Solitude yesterday afternoon for the Outdoor Retailer / Gore-Tex "Wasatch vs the World" SkiMo race. It was a fun, lung-busting, patience testing, and humbling experience.

Since we don't have our own race setups (yet), we scrambled to borrow gear at the last minute. I was able to borrow some demo PDG skis from the Dynafit guys at the last minute, and used my regular TLT5 boots. Andrea grabbed some Wasatch Speed Girl skis from the kind folks at Voile.

The race was a four lap semi-technical (for us) course.  We were both strong on the portions that were based on pure fitness (I guarantee no one ran up the bootpack as fast as I did), but both of us lost a ridiculous amount of time on the technical parts and transitions. There's a huge learning curve in this sport. It will take lots of practice to start bridging the gap. We are looking forward to some longer races (ie. Powderkeg) that theoretically suit us better.

In any case... Andrea and I are excited about giving SkiMo competition a shot. We are definitely diving head first into the shark tank right now - but by next year we think we can be competitive (especially as a co-ed team). This is a relatively small sport at the moment, and the people who do it, do it well. Almost all of the competitors are fast, wearing lots of spandex, and are very skilled on the technical aspects of racing. And they start fast! They are also great people (Chad, for example) who are already going out of their way to give us tips and help us get started in the sport.

Race profile. This was a sprint-lap format. We like the longer climbs!

Jake in yellow, on the boot pack

Andrea figuring out how to get through chopped up snow on 150cm skinny skis!

Solitude Powder Day

How often do you see black on the danger rose? 40+ inches of snow since Thursday, and it was coming down today as well. We skied at Solitude, which never lets us down on a big powder day.

Brigham was right.

This is the place.

5K and a Powder Day

Never ending winter!

This morning we ran a 5K race hosted by the Salt Lake Running Company. We've had this on our calendar for about a month, and planned to use it as a "sharpening" effort before the Provo City Half Marathon next weekend. Our training has been largely geared towards much longer races, but its always good to bust a 5K and see where you're at.

Andrea was absolutely the star of the day. Here's her recap...

Coming into this race, I hadn't run a 5K since high school, and my best times from those days were in the 19-20 minute range. This morning I ran 17:52, which I am very happy about! I'm not quite used to running that kind of pace at altitude, but clearly the increased mileage and recent addition of some track workouts and tempo runs have paid big dividends.

Her run was really impressive in my book. I can't wait to see what she does in the half-marathon, and eventually the marathon! :-)

Things went pretty well for me today as well. I took the lead after a 1/2 mile and didn't really have any competition... came through 2 miles in 9:57 and then just cruised to the finish in 15:45. I'm happy with that, considering I'm much more focused on the marathon right now. Overall, a successful morning... we both ran good times for racing at altitude, and it shows our training continues to be on the right track.

Here's a little video footage from the race:



After the race, we headed up to Solitude, because its STILL SNOWING NONSTOP! We had ANOTHER April powder day! Right now Alta and Snowbird have both surpassed 700 inches of snow for the winter (Alta currently sitting at 724") which is pretty much a record year. The skiing is great right now and will continue to be for the next 2 months. Unfortunately that also means the SLC valley is probably going to massively flood once it starts to get warm outside.

Here's some shots from the post-5K powder day. We skied several laps on the front side of Solitude, along with another dozen or so skiers... lots of fun!

Skinning up

A little relaxation time

Tomorrow is MAY? Feels more like January!

Andrea ripping

Andrea heading up for another lap

Shredding some powder... but wait for it...

Crash sequence! She tried to kill me! :-) Luckily we both came out of this unscathed!

More turns on perfect snow

Laying some tracks

Andrea and some of our work behind her. Our tracks are the ones down the center... not that mess off to the left! Who knows what those guys were doing. Probably snowboarders ruining the snow, as usual.

Clicking in for one more lap up. We skied a little over 4000 feet. A nice afternoon in the mountains.

And at the end of the afternoon, the snow started back up. Tomorrow will likely be another powder day. Kicking off the month of May the right way!

Some more pictures here.

Easter Solitude

After our Superior Adventure on Friday, the weather changed back to cloudy and unsettled (the norm for the past 6-7 weeks), so we opted for some easier skinning and skiing at Solitude over the weekend. Solitude is now closed for the season, which is great, because closed-down ski areas are always fun to play around in. Last spring, my best days of skiing at Beaver Creek came almost a month after the lifts shut down for the season.

Luckily the sun came out for a while on Sunday (and it got downright HOT outside). Despite the warm temps, the consolidated snow was still very fun to ski, especially on shady slopes that were facing due north.


Spring skinning


Some wet snow activity. Probably happened when the rocks heated up on Friday.


Nice to have this place all to ourselves


And the skiing was good, too!


Fantasy Ridge

We have races the next 2 weekends (5K on Apr 30, Half Marathon on May 7), but will definitely be playing in the mountains as the sun is forecasted to finally emerge, and the snowpack should be stabilizing nicely.