Powder days

For an industry that relies on snowfall, can there be too much of a good thing? In Tahoe, “significant snowstorms,” as Vail Resorts called it, were big enough to hamper the company’s ability to fully open its resorts there. Meanwhile, crews in Utah were keeping busy clearing the roads leading to resorts like Snowbird and Alta. But the more the snow piles up, the greater the response from skiers and snowboarders throughout North America, leading to more visits and exponentially more stoke. Case in point: Despite setbacks, Vail said skier visits were up 3.6% so far this season. And so, three editors of varying levels of expertise — beginner, intermediate and expert — last month headed out to revel in the powder and new experiences. Their reports follow.

A first-timer perfects her ‘pizza’ pose at Vail

By Nicole Edenedo

Never in a million years would I have thought that pizza would save my life, but here we are. 

I was on a press ski trip in Vail, Colo., hosted by Vrbo, which had partnered with the National Brotherhood of Skiers for its 50th anniversary summit there. The nonprofit’s aim is to support and promote the presence of people of color on the slopes and train advanced athletes to compete at the Olympic level.

This was only my second time ever hitting the trails. I snowboarded once, but I realized not having the freedom to use both of my legs wasn’t something I could grow to love, and that’s where my interest in skiing developed.

As one of Colorado’s largest ski mountains, peaking at 11,570 feet, Vail Mountain offers a variety of terrain for skiers at any level. 

Beginners have a number of places to get comfortable on the mountain, including Coyote Crossing, which is accessible from the Eagle Bahn Gondola in Lionshead Village, and Sourdough Express on the Golden Peak side, which offers an entire pod of beginner trails. The Avanti Skills Zone Performance Center is also a designated learning center that helps guests improve their skills.

Greg Willis, senior director of skier services at Vail, said the resort “always recommends lessons at every level to help you progress.” For first-time skiers, he added, the instructors are skilled at guiding them to places that might seem out of reach at first glance. Vail Ski and Snowboard School offers skiers and snowboarders a variety of lessons, both group and private, with half-day group offerings starting at $249.

I thought that after one day of lessons I would be the next Lindsey Vonn, coolly sliding down the mountain in no time, casually shredding through fluffy snow like a surfer, leaving that signature white wave in my wake.

Alas, I ended up looking more like Wile E. Coyote, with a face filled with regret upon realizing my perfect plans were about to unravel at the crafty hands of what turned out to be my arch nemesis: the bunny hill.

Or as Vail calls it, Practice Parkway. This is where our group’s ski lessons took place and where our first lesson was on how to walk sideways in our skis up a slight slope. This move I mastered flawlessly. 

Our second task was to slide down the same slope and keep our feet straight, in the classic “french fries” pose, to gain momentum. No one fried better than me. 

Our third task was to slide down a slightly steeper slope, only this time turning the skis inward to make a V-shape, like a pizza slice, which is how skiers brake on the slopes. Well, I pizza’d like nobody’s business, coasting to a complete stop on demand once I reached the bottom.

My confidence was on fire. “This is all there is to skiing? I’m a natural.” No longer feeling like a beginner bunny, I was now a jackrabbit ready for more. But, as fate would have it, I wasn’t ready. The next hill I challenged was the steepest yet — and was it me, or was it a bit steeper than a hill should be with the word “practice” in its name?

I careened down the hill in terror a few times, once nearly crashing into a Magic Carpet conveyor belt carrying small children. Whenever it seemed like I had finally gotten the hang of peacefully sliding down the hill, my peace turned into panic as I sped right out of control, accepting that falling was the only way to stop this wild ride.

There I was, in my own live-action Looney Tunes, with what felt like anvils strapped to my feet and gliding over what felt more like grease than snow, whisking me to a painful (but miraculously recoverable) ending. 

I had been bested by the bunny hill, and all that was missing was a child casually gliding past me going “meep meep.”

But the tides turned for me after I accidentally slid onto an actual trail outside of the practice area and realized, with our lesson over and the instructors having moved on, that it was now up to me to save myself. 

“You’re here to slide,” I remembered my instructor Jenny saying. “You’re in control.” 

That gave me the confidence I needed to stay calm, widen my legs into the biggest New York-style pizza slice I could manage and safely cruise down the trail to the chairlift.

Terror aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my first ski experience. To any first-timers out there, just remember that great instructors and some patience are key and that pizza — in all its forms — is your best friend. 

East Coasters embrace the powder surge in Utah

By Rebecca Tobin

It didn’t take long for me to realize I wasn’t the only skier from the New York metro area bound for the powdery glory of Utah. The overhead bins on our evening Delta flight from Newark to Salt Lake City were dotted with boot bags. 

The ski and snowboard demo racks at Salt Lake’s Evo shop, which specializes in outdoor gear, were picked over, and talk centered around a monster snowstorm about to hit the Wasatch mountain range that night. Two feet of snow was a conservative estimate.

I’ve been skiing with my daughter for years, but this was our first trip west. We’re happy to frequent some very fine ski areas back home. Often close to major metro areas, they are critical to Western resorts as feeders, places where skiers can grow to love the sport and hone their skills on the hardpack before moving to the Rockies and beyond. 

And this year’s snowfall in Tahoe and Utah (among others) is acting “like a magnet,” luring skiers to the mountains, according to Tom Foley, a senior vice president of business intelligence for Inntopia and its DestiMetrics division, which tracks mountain lodging stats. (Inntopia is owned by Travel Weekly parent Northstar Travel Group.)

I was told time and again how lucky we were to make this our first westward foray. The totals in some Utah areas have since topped 600 inches this season, and the interest stoked by the generous snow there and elsewhere has helped boost numbers. According to DestiMetrics, February bookings for in-month arrivals was up 22% year-over-year, indicating that, as it said, the “magic wand of snow was apparent” for short-term bookings. 

“There’s no question that great snowfall always helps move the needle in getting people to book a winter vacation,” Foley said. 

Thanks to an itinerary from Ski Utah, I discovered how simple it is to ski in the Wasatch range. Some friends separately set up camp in Salt Lake City, where they had access to four world-class resorts, provided they got up early enough to beat the rush; there were more options if they drove to Ogden or to Park City and Deer Valley, where hospitality names like Marriott, W and Waldorf await. 

My daughter and I headed for the riches of Solitude Mountain Resort and Brighton Resort. By staying on-mountain at the Inn at Solitude, we had a decent shot at first chair. And by the time we arrived at the base, the promised two feet of snowy goodness was on the ground, and more was filling the air. 

Then I learned about skiing powder as an average-ability, East Coast skier. 

Snow was everywhere. We surfed it and were stuck in it. It clustered into natural moguls and I bumped over it. My new, wider-width skis disappeared into the drifts.  

On a ride up, a fellow skier was on the phone, arranging to meet a friend. Maybe Solitude would open the double-black Milk Run, he suggested. We all agreed how awesome today’s powder totals were. I neglected to mention that my leg muscles were burning. I bungled getting off the lift.

“So? How was your first West Coast powder day, guys???” our friends texted us from Snowbird.

“OK, so for East Coasters on a powder day ... a blue is like a black,” I wrote back. “I’m exhausted.”

The next day, low booming sounds indicated that explosive charges were going off in the canyon and avalanche mitigation was still underway. The most celebrated terrain was still roped off as a result, but Travis Holland, Solitude’s director of communications, rode with me and showed me the lesser-used Sunrise chairlift. Some experts use Sunrise to get to the Summit chair, from which they can access the most challenging steeps. But trails off Sunrise meander down to the base, making for easy, fun laps. I also discovered an East Coast advantage: Having faced crushing windchills, cold days in Utah seem merely chilly to me.

Then the sun came out. By this time, storm totals were above four feet, terrain was opening and there were powder stashes everywhere. At nearby Brighton, Utah’s oldest ski resort, which still retains a fun, funky vibe, my daughter headed into the expert-level glades with an instructor. 

Back at Solitude, I could see what I was skiing, and it was fluffy and soft. Our friends arrived and dropped into the Honeycomb Canyon’s Here be Dragons. 

With confidence, I rode to the top of Summit and hopped on the Dynamite trail, where I finally carved over a patch of hard-packed snow that made a familiar “skritch” sound under my skis. I smiled. Now, I felt at home.

Facing the challenge and beauty of heli-skiing in Alaska

By Robert Silk

Ever since I was a boy, I’ve watched videos of helicopter skiers making smooth turns in untouched powder and wondered if one day that could me.

So, on a recent Thursday morning in Alaska, as I waited to be picked up by shuttle for my first heli-skiing excursion, I was excited with possibility but also tense with self-doubt.

Fortunately, as staff from Chugach Powder Guides arrived at Alyeska Resort, about 45 minutes south of Anchorage, a moment of levity helped me relax. Behind me, I heard a woman explain to one of the Chugach guides that she was not among the day’s heli-skiers.

“That’s okay. You’re still a good person. You’re just going to have less fun than us,” the guide responded.

Chugach Powder Guides, which has been operating since 1997, flies a fleet of four helicopters and offers access to more than 750,000 acres of terrain in the Chugach range, where annual snowfall averages 650 inches. With so much variable weather, the company also uses a back-up fleet of snowcats as, historically, helicopter operations are canceled approximately half the time, my guide Peter Ostroski explained.

On this day, however, the skies were sunny. So, at around 10:30 a.m. I found myself atop my first peak of the day, turning my back to a 25 mph wind as I struggled to cinch up my backpack. The ride to this location had been relatively short, maybe 15 minutes, and altogether amazing as we climbed out of the small town of Girdwood, traveled over the icy Cook Inlet and then flew over a mix of boreal forest and the glaciers of the Chugach range. My trip was sponsored, but many people, I realized, pay several hundred dollars just for a ride like that, and they don’t even get to ski.

We headed down the mountain, and at first, I was mildly disappointed. Yes, the open wilderness views were pristine. But the snow at the top didn’t match my naive image of heli-skiing as a vehicle for accessing never-ending light powder. The area had seen approximately a foot of snow over the previous two days, but as Ostroski later explained, winds in the region the previous night had been as high as 70 mph. As a result, the wind-scraped snow at the top of the mountain was a bit crusty.

Still, as we got lower, the snow deepened and softened, providing a taste of what was to come later in the day.

We boarded the helicopter for our second run, and our guides steered toward a new location in search of less wind and more consistent snow.

We found both ingredients, but especially shelter from the wind, on the second landing, where our launch point accessed a wide, appealing skiing alley overlooked to the right and left by rocky mountain faces.

Heli-skiing has a reputation of being only for true experts. And, it’s true, Ostroski told me, that one should at least be a strong intermediate skier or low-level advanced skier in order to handle the varying conditions of skiing ungroomed backcountry terrain. But heli-skiing can offer much more than the cornices and steep faces that are the stuff of freestyle skiing and snowboarding videos. Indeed, much of the terrain accessible to Chugach Powder Guides is moderate in pitch.

That was the case with this second run, enabling me to ski comfortably through a descent of perhaps a couple thousand feet as I skirted and sometimes crossed over the fresh lines that had been carved ahead of me by a handful of fellow skiers.

Then we were off to yet another landing area, where we would end up skiing the remainder of the day — a day that would ultimately encompass seven runs and a healthy total of 17,000 vertical feet.

I’m an advanced skier. But while I’m strong on moguls, I’ve never been as comfortable in powder of significant depth. Consequently, my runs on my heli-skiing adventure followed a familiar pattern. I’d make plenty of satisfying turns higher up while my legs were relatively fresh, the terrain was generally steeper and the snow wasn’t as deep. But about two-thirds of the way down, as the snow thickened and my thighs grew heavy with fatigue, I’d become a bit clumsy on my skis.

Still, even as I tired, the untouched tracks, clear skies and stunning surrounding peaks, including the 4,600-foot-high Byron Peak, made for an extraordinary experience.

Back in the helicopter hangar at the end of the day, I summed up my feelings concisely in a text to my worried mother.

“Down from heli-skiing,” I wrote. “Safe and exhilarated and tired and sore.”

Yep, it really had been a great day.

Chugach Powder Guides charges $1,575 for a single-day outing, with a guarantee that customers will ski 16,000 to 18,000 vertical feet. Many customers choose four-day packages, including lodging at Alyeska Resort, which start at $6,550 per person for double occupancy.