Shredfest 2008 recap
So a little over a week ago I met my good friend Scott in Salt Lake City, Utah for a weekend of tearing up the slopes, teaching some suckers what-for, and polygamy (porters).
I should mention this was only something like Scott’s fourth or fifth time snowboarding. He’s a wonder of human development on the slopes, for sure, and I remember the *second* time he was going snowboarding was a few years ago when he flew to Seattle and we took a trip to Whistler. I remember the conversation well:
- (about 1.5 hours out of Seattle after picking him up from the airport -
- Scott: Did you know I haven’t been snowboarding since I used that board once in high school?
- Me: Ha ha! Yeah, right . . .
- Scott: No - I’m serious
- Me: . . .
- Me: I’m going to kill you
about 3-4 hours from Whistler)
But somehow it turned out he could just do it and we had an awesome time. But this is supposed to be about Salt Lake City…where was I? Oh yeah, I hadn’t started yet…
We arrived in Salt Lake City early Thursday evening, waited for Advantage to look for our rental car (they had all kinds of cars that we didn’t have a reservation for, just not the one we reserved - after waiting about 45 minutes they gave up trying to find our car and gave us a Jeep Liberty) and eventually got to Scott’s brother-in-law’s place in the Sugar House neighborhood. We dropped our stuff off before going to the Red Iguana for dinner. I had some delicious nachos, but an hour and a half later when I tried running some 800’s, I would regret that selection. The house was about a mile from Highland Highschool (go Rams!!!) so around 10:30 I headed out to their track to do the workout I should have done on Tuesday. There was snow on the track (the only tracks on the track were from a deer and it didn’t maintain the lane), it was brutal, I only made it through three reps and this post is really not supposed to be about running…
The person who sold our pass the previous night recommended avoiding Snowbird on Saturday since there would probably be a lot of college students there so we went their Friday morning, instead, for our first day out. This turned out to be fine advice since we didn’t wait in any significant lift lines all three days. The snow in the Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons has been just outstanding every day I’ve been there and judging from almost everyone’s accounts I’ve ever heard, our day one met those expectations. They had about 10″ of fresh powder this day and we had a bunch of incredible runs. The day was overcast and very windy at the top and the crossover to Mineral Basin, but overall it was just incredible with plenty of virtually untouched powder. They’ve recently finished a cool tunnel between the front and back sides so we skipped the Tram pass (which costs ~$10 more) and just used the tunnel to get to Mineral Basin, which worked like a charm. Run of the day: anything in Mineral Basin - even the frontside drop back over to the tunnel entrance, which was about 300′ of steep untouched powder. Friday night: We wound down with some cheap pizza from a place at in a strip mall in nearby Sugar House and talked shop through the night.
Saturday we hit Solitude. This was probably the most picturesque day with clear skies, but probably had the least awesome snow. It was still an outstanding day and still probably had 5″ of fresh powder, but there were times when it was impossible not to hit a groomed run here or there. Oh well. 
Run of the day: Summit chair winding back through Honeycomb Canyon to the Honeycomb Return chair. This run just kept going and going and going. When we got to the Honeycomb Return chair there were some ski patrol there with their dog loading onto the lift! The dog was having an outstanding time in the snow and a fun time riding up the lift. Saturday night: we relaxed at Red Rock Brewery with some onion rings and their microbrews. I was starting to feel like trash but like an idiot I kept drinking beer.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling like total trash and just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there all day but wasn’t about to do that to Scott, so we made the trek to Brighton for our final day on the slopes. I can’t say this clearly enough - it was incredible. They had about 15″ drop the night before and we were swimming in powder all day. On the first run up people were on what should have been groomed runs under the lift and getting stuck in or floating through powder up to their knees. I was a little worried there would be too much snow and it would be impossible not to get stuck, but we’re both just so awesome that that really wasn’t a problem. We stuck to the blacks and never really got badly stuck all day. The Great Western lift was, sadly, closed, but the rest of the mountain was open and they have a new high speed quad over at Millicent. We took a couple runs off Crest Express before taking the cross over to Milly (note to self: need to remember how hard this crossover is to make and how much speed you need to not hike to the lift). We did about a half dozen runs all over Milly on the blacks and probably some double blacks, weaving through the Aspens, before heading back to the main section. Then we tried a few runs over off Snake Creek and ended the day again off Crest Express. Run of the day: Wren Hollow off Crest Express. We must have done this a half dozen times and it never really got boring. I had an incredible experience where I thought I saw a small toeside hit I wanted to jump off. I started for it and just as I was about to hit it…I sunk right into the side It was just a huge powder bank - the snow wasn’t packed enough to lift off from. Sunday night: we went back to watch some of the Superbowl, then went out for dinner, finding almost everything closed, and settled on Taco Bell which was delicious.
So the summary is that Salt Lake City continues to be an incredible place to snowboard. There are a ton of other resorts within an hour or so of the city center, but Snowbird, Solitude, and Brighton are all some of the best places I’ve ever been. They aren’t the resort that Whistler is at all, but I think they have the best snow, best lift lines, and generally best lifts of any resorts I’ve been to - I already can’t wait to get back.