Outside the Gates: Olympic Powder Journal
by David Goodman
2/12/02
The tease was first dangled before me during a serendipitous powder-choked trip to Alta and Snowbird last winter: return to Utah's fabled Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons during the Olympics, and I would have the mountains to myself. The greedy fantasy that I could plunder epic stashes at my leisure -- Snowbird's Cirque, Alta's Devil's Castle, Solitude's Honeycomb Canyon -- was just too much to resist. So I braved the threat of airport strip searches and military interrogations to return to Utah two days after the Olympics began. Here is my account of the "Un-Olympics" -- Utah skiing where the Olympics were not.
DAY 1 - MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12
OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: WORLD DEBATES ICE SKATING SCANDAL
UN-OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: WE DEBATE POWDER LINES AT ALTA
It is a bluebird day, just 48-hours after a 16-inch dump, and Alta is empty. My road trip-mate and fellow Vermonter Bill Minter and I stand atop a boot track just above the wide open expanse of Ballroom, and look down upon an improbably untracked swatch of snow. "This feast would have been eaten in 15 minutes on a normal Alta day," says Bill, as we debate the merits of which of many lines to harvest. I drop into knee-deep freshies on the cold north face, bang off a couple dozen turns, and pull up to admire our lines.
We find the same story out at Devil's Castle. Alta's famous boot-up showpiece is normally well hammered within hours after a storm. But two days after the last flake has fallen, I find a wide selection of uncut lines on which to inscribe my signature. This is great news -- for everyone but Alta.
"We're down by 50 percent," rues Connie Marshall, Alta's freeheeling minister of information, who nevertheless finds it impossible to scowl as she improves her tan on the deck at Alf's, the mid-mountain lodge. "We'll just have to see the Olympics as an investment in the future. But for now..." she motions to the lonely slopes, "it's all yours."
After a scorching day under the cloudless skies, I venture into the uncrowded Sitzmark Pub at the Alta Lodge to watch highlights of the day's events. I learn that the women's downhill at Snowbasin was canceled due to wind. Bill and I look at one another in disbelief: wind? There was barely a puff. Locals who have just returned after waiting in line for hours at Snowbasin confirm our suspicion that there were only occasional light gusts, but that officials felt that a few competitors might benefit unfairly from the tailwind. It's a sign of how removed from nature Olympic skiing has become: as racers mach down rock-hard manmade "snow" and refuse to ski when Mother Nature shows even the slightest attitude, I wonder out loud how much this contrived sport has in common with the unruly, passionate adventure we call skiing.
DAY 2 - TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13
OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: HARD ICE OF 500M SPEEDSKATE YIELDS AMERICAN GOLD
UN-OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: SLOPES OF GRIZZLY GULCH DELIVER UTAH WHITE
I learn that burning blue skies have a dark side: it is baking the snow into muck. No sooner had Alta begun offering snowcat skiing two days earlier in Grizzly Gulch, the new-school backcountry playground that extends up the canyon from the ski lifts, then a face-busting breakable crust forced it to suspend.
"I recommend the cat track," Alta snow safety director Titus Case advises as we dismount from the snowcat at the top of the canyon. "Just about everything else will be heinous."
But I am from Vermont, where we stubbornly -- some might say desperately -- insist that if it's white, it's skiable. We proceed to work the shadow lines to mine the soft stuff. We periodically emerge onto frozen chunks, then deftly dart back into the shadows. It's a schizophrenic dance, joyous where it's soft, yet paranoiac thanks to a sun crust that may hurl us face first if we make one misplaced turn. We finish on a wall of north facing knee-deep powder that lies just above the cat track.
All this is done to the backdrop of F15's strafing the azure blue sky every couple minutes. They are allegedly ensuring our homeland security, but I suspect it's more of a propaganda exercise of Olympic proportions.
We stroll into the Alta Lodge at lunchtime, where owner Mimi Leavitt waves us over to her table. "Do you speak French?" she whispers.
"Badly," I reply. But I tell her that Bill, a former Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, speaks fluently. She promptly orders us to take a seat on either side of her guest, Albert, the mayor of Albertville, France, site of the 1992 winter Olympics. After an exchange of bonjours, we get to talking about the games. He complains about how nationalism and commercialism has contaminated the Olympics. "The opening ceremony should welcome the world, not boast of national pride," he scoffs.
The mayor then insists that we join him for skiing, a request we are more than happy to oblige. I quickly discover that Albert is very difficult man to guide. At the top of a mogul field, he plunges downhill with impressive speed, forcing me, his would-be guide to catch up. Shortly after, he comes to a rope he doesn't like. He darts under it like a seasoned poacher, and we follow hungrily into the low-angle uncut. I figure if a renowned lawmaker breaks the rules, who are we, mere simpleminded powderhounds, to doubt him?
Before parting ways, I ask Mayor Albert how the Olympics were for Albertville. "Fantastique," he raves. "It caused a revolution of the mind," he says, pointing to his head. "Before, Albertville was a closed society. Now, the world comes to us, and we realize we must interact with them." May the powdery theocracy of Utah have the same result.
DAY 3 - WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13
OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: SWISS SKI JUMPER SAILS OVER THE COMPETITION
UN-OLYMPIC HGHLIGHT: LEAPING INTO SOLITUDE'S STEEP POWDER
I slid gingerly to the edge of the large cornice overhanging CWM Chute -- the rowdy airborne entrance into Honeycomb Canyon at Solitude. We had come up from Alta to ski at Solitude, and this was our friendly greeting. I peered in for a while, trying to figure out how not to cartwheel over the cornice, ricochet off the rock walls, and rocket down the couloir. Bill had no use for the head trips -- he wisely just jumped in and ripped a dozen turns to reach the bottom.
Shouting down the voice of reason that threatened to paralyze me, I launched over the cornice, hip checked the headwall, and began to slide straight downward. As rock walls rushed toward me and powder flew about my head, I focused on keeping my skis below me. And praying, which always help when things don't go as planned. Suddenly, I came to a stop. Checking to see that I was still alive, I dusted myself off, then proceeded to plunge into the powder below me -- which was much more enjoyable on my feet. I only realized on the next run that my pride was not the only casualty of the CWM Chute: I broke a ski, and was forced to ski on it for the rest of the day 'til I could return to Alta.
Honeycomb Canyon is a gorgeous sun dappled ski bowl that lies off in its own little world. Untracked faces appear around each bend -- four days after the last storm. Conditions were highly variable -- in a 100 ft stretch, it could go from sugary snow, to creamy powder, to unskiable sun muck, to somewhat skiable eggshell crust. Ah snow. We are seeing it in all its forms here, for better or worse.
Solitude gave new meaning to the word. When we finally exited Honeycomb and rejoined the main ski area, the place looked abandoned. The depopulated slopes looked like a postnuclear landscape, not the bluebird ski day that it was.
"The Olympics are killing us, so they must be killing Solitude even more," quipped Alta snow safety director Titus Case later. We were just glad we could be there to help them out with all that untracked snow.
DAY 4 - THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14
OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: RUSSIAN SKATERS ICE THE CAKE
UN-OLYMPIC HIGHLIGHT: SILVER FORK POWDER IS JUST DESSERT
Just when faces were growing long and new snow running short , the backcountry delivered the goods. We were joined by SLC local Dan Willis on a backcountry tour from Little Cottonwood over to Big Cottonwood Canyon. This is the Silver Fork tour, a Wasatch classic that is renowned for its huge untracked faces. Two inches of new snow had fallen, which was just enough to make the climb up the valley soft and inviting.
After a casual climb up from Alta, we reached the corniced ridge that separates Little and Big Cottonwood Canyons. Below us, numerous north facing gullies dove downhill into the V-shaped bottom of the valley. Like shoppers in search of a bargain, we cruised along the ridge until we found just the shot we liked. I was first to slide into the knee-deep powder. Cold snow sprayed across my face on the second turn. I instantly knew this could be the best run of my un-Olympic odyssey. We plunged downward, alternating tight turns in the trees with huge GS carves as the face opened up. When we hit the valley floor, I dove into the gully and rode it like a bicycle, leaning hard around the corners and threading between the rock walls.
The gully finally shot me out into a wide open field. Dan, Bill and I regrouped, each emerging from our own pokes. We stopped to gulp air, and peer up at the walls of ski lines that towered overhead. The immensity of all the potential ski lines stunned us into silence.
That night, we plunged in with another kind of zeal into the festivities in downtown SLC. The streets of this town with its famously moribund nightlife were alive with music, food, dancing, and plenty of credit card flexing. We lacked the cash to see the Olympic events in person, but it appeared the corporate sponsors would give us the chance to lighten our wallets in other ways. Everywhere we turned, sponsors were hawking their wares, from the $5 Buds at the block-long Bud World, to the Coca Cola Pavilion and Pepsi World. The party atmosphere and unbridled consumerism mixed effortlessly into a uniquely Olympic brew.
Our un-Olympic powder odyssey ended here among the revelers. We would have enjoyed watching more of the games. But we were glad for the distraction while we got to star in our own private Utah powderfest.
BIO: Former POWDER contributing editor David Goodman returned home safely to Stowe, Vermont, where he hasn't been strip searched for days.