13 feet of snow in 12 days!!!

Before I get to talking about all the new snow, I need to share this video we took a few weeks ago but it got lost in the shuffle. Julie and I were up at Snowbird with about 18 inches of new snow and we were lucky enough to drop into Mineral Basin right when it opened. I decided to video the experience while holding the camera in my hand so please excuse the poor camera work. The highlight of the video is definitely the full on cartwheel that Julie manages to pull off when she leans too far forward. Don't worry folks, it doesn't hurt at all if you crash in deep snow like this, it is like being surrounded by marshmallows:



Anyway, on to the main blog post:

Two weekends ago Julie and I were climbing outdoors in T shirts in 75 degree weather. The total snow for the season at snowbird was at 387 inches and we were wondering if it might end up falling short of the 500 inch season average. As I write this the snowfall stands at 543 inches and today Julie and I had one of the best powder days of the season. For the past two weeks snowbird has averaged more than a foot of new snow a day and in the past 48 hours we've gotten around 4 feet which made for epic conditions on the slopes today.


The powder at snowbird today was so deep you would literally sink up to your waist in places. It is fortunate that Snowbird has plenty of steep terrain because on anything more moderate this much snow could bog you down like quicksand. It was snowing so hard up on the mountain itself that I couldn't really get any pictures to come out well so I've improvised with some pictures I took at the base.

It is amazing how much more snow falls at the higher elevations compared to the valley. Our apartment is at 4,000 feet elevation and we have exactly 0 inches of snow on the ground down here. The entrance to the Canyon road is only a few miles away but a few thousand feet higher and there are a few feet of snow on the ground. The base of snowbird is around 8,000 feet and there is a whole lot of snow as you can see in the below pictures. The peak of the mountain is over 11,000 feet and it is nearly impossible to describe how much snow has fallen up there.

This picture is from the parking lot at the base of snowbird. The truck buried in this picture is a full sized Dodge Durango and the snow that has covered it all fell in about a 12 hour period overnight!


This is also a picture from the bottom of the mountain where groomers pack the snow down every evening. The snow in this picture fell after the area was groomed the previous evening. For reference my board is about 5 1/2 feet tall and half of it is buried.


The previous two pics just showed overnight snow fall. In this one you can see how much has fallen cumulatively over the past two weeks. In this picture Julie is actually standing on a balcony that earlier in the season overlooked the mountain. Now the snow has piled up well above the balcony which is normally at least 10 feet or so above ground level!

Even though I couldn't get any pictures to come out on the mountain, the pros apparently could so I've copied a few of the snowbird pictures of the day to give you an idea of what riding in this much snow looks like. I love how in the third picture the guy is completely submerged except for a ski pole!





OK, as excited as I am about all the snow I've also got a few pics from a few weeks ago that you might find interesting. If you read closely on the box in the picture below you can see that it has a U.N. Weapons designation of "Howitzer". Don't worry, the box is empty but it is one that was used to store the shells that the Ski patrol shoot off every day to set off any potential avalanches before the slopes open.



This is one of the spent shell casings from the Howitzer. It smelled like fireworks... Apparently the Ski patrol at snowbird has a bigger stockpile of explosives than the military of a small country.

Lastly, I will close with some pics from a nice bluebird day a few weeks back with about a foot of fresh snow. A great day to be sure but it seems so quaint now compared to what we were riding in today.