First day on the hill couldn’t have been better. It’s already being talked about as an ‘All time top five day’ , even before the rosy glow of faded recollection elevates it status even higher.
Snowbasin isn’t really a resort, not in the European “Destination Resort” sense of the word. It feels much more like a locals hill and it’s this clandestine nature that makes it a such fantastic place to visit. It's a secret stash and we were the only Europeans we came across. On top of that it’s a really pretty mountain with a good mixture of gradients reminiscent of Sunshine Village in Canada, for those that have visited.
The resort only has seven lifts, which you wouldn’t expect to be enough, but somehow, it is. Maybe because two of them are high speed, eight man gondolas, that whisk you to the top of the hill in double quick time, you don’t seem to notice as much.
Snowbasin Mountain is no Val d’Isere, with a huge roaming expanse of trails. What it does have is a compact and varied massif, with more than enough to keep you occupied. A large part if this can be put down to the nature of the mountain and the delightful unpisted areas that link every run. Almost everything within the ski boundary is rideable and the nature of North American natural forest is such that trips between the trees are a real joy. We had a magnificent time bouncing around the powder through open, yet interesting terrain.
The sun shone all the through the day and snow was almost perfect, plenty of fresh powder with just a couple of icy patches on piste.
As usual with the US the lodges are fine and not too crowded, we haven’t tried the food yet as we’re saving ourselves for the famous “Shooting Star Starburger” tonight but we did treat ourselves to some local ale. I have to say America has really woken up to beer in the last few years, we had a local wheat beer, “Blue Moon” which tasted great, not the pasteurised muck they’ve been peddling as ‘real ale’ in the recent past.
Everyone managed a couple of spills during the day, commensurate with hours of tooling around in powder, I saved mine ‘till the last run. Until that point I’d been feeling a little smug about being the ‘last man standing’. As we all know, pride comes before a fall, quite literally in this case. It was a splendid effort, I turned confidently into a little steep powdery drop off, caught the front of the board and did a couple of wonky cartwheels down the hill. No injuries, just a quick look around to see if anyone had spotted my mishap, before I was off again to more or less repeat the trick thirty seconds later. Did I mention my hipflask had become mysteriously empty at about the same time.
More of the same tomorrow hopefully.
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