After attending a fun wedding in Long Beach and spending some time with my sweetie, I was back on the road (or actually the air) to Salt Lake City. Nate picked me up at the airport and we headed back up into the mountains, this time bound for The Canyons, which is a resort right next to Park City. My family (Mom, Dad and Rach but no Collin) was staying at the Brice’s ski “chalet,” and they were nice enough to let us dirtbags stay for awhile. In reality the “chalet” was one of the nicest houses I’ve ever been in, and happened to be a quarter of the way up the mountain. The ski run was about 30’ from the back door, and the morning we got there it had just snowed a good 5” of fresh. Sounds like fun to me! We skied the whole day and managed to find fresh tracks for most of it. Nate and I even stopped for lunch with everyone, which is a rare occurrence. Later that night, after sledding down the ski runs and soaking in the hot tub (much better than sitting in the van) we all went out to a great dinner in Park City. Nate and I were considering making bean and cheese burritos in the back of the van, but we were easily convinced by the promise of sea food and meat.
The next day was just as nice as the first, with great snow and some fun runs. Almost everyone in the house skied that day in a huge group, which wound up being 14 people. Against all odds, everyone had a great time and stayed mostly together. At the end of the day, Nate headed on down to the airport to fly home for a job interview, which he had only found out about the day before. At least he wasn’t paying for the plane ticket. A few of us headed out for some more sledding, except this time we built a big jump into some powder. The jump kept getting progressively bigger, until Lauren (who can be seen in the photos screaming) set the distance record of 10’ out and 6’ down.
The next day everyone in the house was heading back to Southern California, so I got the boot back into the van. I called up Larry Nokes (a family friend from Laguna who most of you won’t know) who was in town and we went over and skied at Solitude, in Big Cottonwood canyon. The skiing over there was awesome! It hadn’t snowed for 3 or 4 days and we were still finding fresh powder in the trees. There were all kinds of steep lines to explore, and to top it off the lift ticket was only 45 bucks. That night, the Nokes and some other friends took pity on me and took me out to dinner in Park City again. The dinner was great, but I’m going to get spoiled with all this good food! After dinner I headed back over to Aunt Joan and Uncle Sven’s place in Midway and avoided sleeping in the van for yet another night.
The next two days I ended up skiing by myself back at The Canyons, which was mostly fun but a bit lonely. On the second day I couldn’t take the crying and complaining anymore (mine, to no one in particular) so I headed down to Salt Lake for some pizza and longboard skateboarding with Nate’s brother Chris (the one who can be seen going huge in the I-street photos). After some fun cruising through the University of Utah campus and scaring pedestrians, I picked Nate up at the airport and we were on the road again. Next destination: Jackson Hole, Wyoming!