This year’s Powder Mountain trip was planned a bit late, primarily because Judy and I have been so busy. Between moving to Palo Alto and both of us being swamped at work, we didn’t really even start thinking about the trip until mid-January or so. After a bit of schedule coordination with the group (President’s Day weekend ended up working best for everyone) and an exhaustive search for reasonably priced airfare (the relatively late reservations combined with a holiday weekend made it hard to find airfare that wasn’t outrageously priced), we were all set to go.

Judy and I arrived in Salt Lake at around 4 PM on Friday. Brian was already at the lodge after having driven from Colorado while Bob, Jen, Dave, and Patty weren’t due to arrive until around 10 PM. We only rented one rental car so Judy and I had some time to kill before we could pick up the rest of the group.

Last year, we had rented a Suburban which fairly comfortably accommodated 7 people plus gear. Although I had rented a Suburban again this year, we were given an Expedition which we quickly discovered to be a good deal smaller than a Suburban. Judy and I had planned to kill time in SLC until the rest of the group arrived, but considering the small size of the Expedition, we thought it might be a better idea to head to the lodge, drop off our gear, and then head back to SLC. We started doing that but quickly got mired in bumper to bumper traffic. I guess even Utah has traffic these days. Not wanting to waste a bunch of time in traffic, we decided just to head back towards SLC.

We did some grocery shopping at the SLC Wild Oats (same company as Henry’s) where Judy loaded up on some fresh organic fruits and veggies which would comprise her dinner for the next two nights. For dinner, we hit Sages, a cute little vegan restaurant in SLC. I had the vegan Philly cheese steak sandwich which despite not tasting like the real thing, was pretty good nonetheless.

After dinner we hit a bookstore to kill the remaining time. I started perusing Stephen Hawkins “A Brief History of Time“. It was a fascinating read, but I soon realized that I was thinking too hard. I had been working quite a bit in recent weeks and was pretty much mentally exhausted. I just didn’t want to have to work my brain too much! I put it down, but the book peaked my interest so I’ll probably try to check it out from the library sometime.

Before long, it was time to pick up the rest of the gang. The SLC airport has a cool temporary parking area where you park your car in front of some large screens. These screens display flight info and let you know when you should pull out and pick up whomever it is you’re picking up.

It took a bit of work, but we were able to cram everything into the Expedition and were soon on our way. It was pretty late and we were afraid that the grocery stores in Ogden might be closed before we got there so we stopped at a Smith’s not far from the airport to get groceries.

It was near midnight by the time we got to the lodge. The particular unit we were staying in this time was kind of unique in that it had a big entertainment room upstairs, complete with a big-screen TV. We found out the next day that the big screen for some reason wasn’t able to display the signal from the Dish Network system very well, and we never got around to watching a DVD movie on it.

Brian decided to stay at the lodge to get some work done the next day. The rest of us headed to Snowbasin. It was fr…fr…frigid that morning! The external temperature gauge in the Expedition showed 7F and it dropped to 1F on our way up the mountain!

Being a holiday weekend, it was more crowded than we were accustomed since we usually come the weekend before. The main parking lot was actually filled and we had to park in the overflow area. The snow was decent and we were able to find some fresh powder, especially towards the latter part of the day when we found some nice fluff by hiking up to “Mini Lightning Ridge”, our nickname for the Powderhound Bowl.

That evening, Dave cooked his signature pasta, and cooked a bit too much. Of course, I had documented this previously, but we obviously didn’t read things closely enough. 3 lb of pasta and 2 jars of sauce was perfect for 8 people, but this time we only had 6 people (Judy ate her own dinner). Oh well, lesson learned. We’ll get it right one of these days!

We watched the Winter Olympics that evening and perused a bunch of cool internet videos on Bobert’s laptop including Matrix Style Ping Pong (really cool!), a Nike advertisement of an impossibly cool soccer sequence (gotta be fake but still cool), and The Chinese Backstreet Boys (I thought this was the lamest thing when I first saw it but it has grown on me somewhat and I now find it amusing). Afterwards, I mercilessly destroyed Patty in the highly anticipated Ultimate Tetris Face-Off, brutally exposing her for the Tetris neophyte that she is.

It snowed a few inches that evening. We hit Powder Mountain the next day and were able to make some fresh tracks coming down the Timberline lift and were able to find nice powder after taking the tow-rope. About halfway through the day, the resort suffered a power outage and had to be shut down for the rest of the day. This actually worked out well for us because we got a good day in and they handed out free half-day vouchers.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy and consisted mostly of watching a Cirque du Soleil DVD that Dave had brought. We were so lazy that we didn’t even want to go upstairs to watch it on the big screen TV! Dave cooked a yummy beef and veggie stir fry. We ended up with way too much rice because Dave’s eyes turned out to be much bigger than his stomach. While at the grocery store, we had decided to get the 3 lb rice bag instead of a smaller size mainly because Dave confidently asserted, “Dude, I’ll eat half of that bag by myself.” Looks like another lesson learned for future trips.

We used our free half-day vouchers at Powder Mountain the next day. It was another great day of riding with plenty of good powder on the far left side of the mountain.

I’ve become a valued repeat customer at Moose Hollow since I’ve been booking a lodge there at least once a season for the past several years. The people there recognize my name whenever I call to make reservations. In fact, they gave me a 10% discount on lodging for this trip because they love me so much. Unfortunately, my name is now associated with the mug of one infamous Brian Beattie because Brian pretended he was me when he picked up the keys on Friday. Despite this, Judy was able to coax the Moose Hollow people into allowing us a late check out by masquerading as my wife. Our 4 PM check-out time was great because it allowed us to come back to the lodge, change, and pack up at a leisurely pace. It also allowed us to finish the bulk of the remaining food. Patty had used the leftover rice to make fried rice that morning and we polished the rest of it off that afternoon.

All in all, a great trip, although I was kind of bummed because I really wanted to take a few runs through the Snowbasin park. This park was where my favorite jump was and I wanted to work on my jumps a bit. Unfortunately, we just ran out of time. Oh well. The funny thing is that before this trip, I wasn’t all that excited about going snowboarding, but now, I’ve kind of got the bug again. Maybe Judy and I will be taking a trip to Tahoe sometime soon…

There were a few lessons learned this trip:

• 3 lb of pasta and 2 jars of sauce is perfect for 8 people. For 6 people? I’m thinking 2.5 lb (or just 2 lb if they don’t sell 0.5 lb bags) of pasta and 2 jars of sauce.
• 3 lb of rice for 6 people is way too much unless the rest will be eaten at another meal. I’m thinking 2 lb of rice is good for 6 people.
• We should keep inviting Bob because he provides internet access.

Here are the damages:

Lodging (7 each)                    $ 822.00 ($117.43 pp)
Expedition (6 each - no Brian)      $ 675.80 ($112.63 pp)
Gas (6 each - no Brian)             $  46.27 ($  7.71 pp)
Lift Tix - Snow Basin
(6 each - no Brian)                 $ 294.00 ($ 49.00 pp)
Lift Tix - Powder Mountain
(7 each)                            $ 287.00 ($ 41.00 pp)
Groceries (6 each, no Judy))        $  63.15 ($ 10.53 pp)
TOTALS                              $2188.22

Bob     $ 338.30     PAID
Brian   $ 168.96     PAID
Dave    $ 338.30     PAID
Patty   $ 338.30     PAID
Jen     $ 338.30     PAID
Judy    $ 327.77     PAID
Roger   $ 338.30     PAID
TOTAL   $2188.23

Of course last not but least, here’s the pics and vids. One of the reasons it took so long for me to get these online is that I was figuring out a way to make the videos smaller in filesize. I took the videos at 640X480 resolution and some of the files were pushing 20MB! That would have taken eons to download over my pathetic DSL line. Fortunately, I discovered Quicktime Pro which does an absolutely amazing job of compression while retaining quality. For the geeks out there, I’ll be posting a follow-up entry on why Quicktime totally rocks.

Posted by Roger at 10:53 am.