01/27/12
75 years Brighton has been open, so we decided to head up for a first night session to take in more fresh snow, bonfires and some fireworks. Things felt much better than last week, no serious cramping in the feet, and the snow was still decently soft.
The fireworks, however, were on hold for a bit due to a cloud that decided to hang around for the festivities as well. The folks with the flame on the fuze decide that enough was a enough and started firing them off anyway. It was kinda surreal really. We could seem the launch up, and certainly hear them, but the initial blast was mostly obscured by the cloud. They had a lot of the star burst types that let lots of sparkly bits fall to the ground which made for a great effect as they fell out of the cloud.
We weren’t up there long, a handful of runs, but it was well worth the drive.

01/22/12
Feet, yes feet of snow have fallen over the past few days. It’s clear, and not too cold. Should be a great day, the best day of the year easily. Should…such a funny word.
For some reason my feet were cramping for the first time since having my boot liners molded. On top of that I had only slept about 5.5 hours. And I just wasn’t feeling it. What really did me in, though, was the people. Rather, the assholes. Due to the snow there had been an avalanche overnight in Little Cottonwood canyon, closing it. The folks that would normally be going to Snowbird and Alta ended up heading to Solitude and Brighton. I’ve never seen it so crowded and everyone was either impatient and cranky, or tired of being pushed around and cranky.
12:30 rolls around and we decide to roll out. A day lost, but a lesson learned..somewhere..I’m sure…

01/20/12
The first true powder day of the year, and the snow keeps falling! Went up for a solid half day in the morning, and had a good 6 to 8 inches on top of a bit more soft stuff. Falling didn’t hurt, which is a first for the season. However, for some reason my feet kept cramping up! This is after a few good days of no craps at all after having the Intuition boot liners baked and molded. I still may have them redone to do some final tweaking, but we’ll see how Sunday’s adventure goes, with even more snow.
Oh…and I got into the air a few times too. I’ve been wanting to get more comfy off the snow and finally got up the gumption to just try it. Only had a handful of hits, but gotta start somewhere. The soft stuff brings confidence, that’s for sure!

01/07/12
After what has been, apparently, the driest December on record, we finally got snow. 7″ over night as a matter of fact. While it couldn’t really be considered a powder day and was, technically, “dust on crust”, it was still a hell of a lot softer than it has been.
It was surprisingly uncrowded, which was quite nice and we ended up riding for about 3 hours straight before we decided to get on with the rest of our day and save some energy for a possible revisit tomorrow.
I can say that one benefit of it being as hard packed as it has been is that it’s allowed forced me to work on my switch carving
I sure hope the snow keeps up, but there’s nothing else in the upcoming forecast….