This is part 5 in a series documenting our week in Park City. You can catch up on Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
When I first visited Park City in 2005, I had an amazing day of riding at The Canyons. Amazing because there was 8 or 9 inches of powpow that had fallen overnight, and also because I was breaking in a new snowboard. Adam’s half-sister who lives near Park City took us around The Canyons for a day, we rode mostly steeps but it was all covered in feather-light Utah fresh. This year, after putting in time at PCMR, Sundance, and Brighton, I was looking forward to returning to The Canyons.
We made it there Saturday; the lift lines were short, even for the cabriolet and the gondola, and a few inches of snow had fallen overnight—nothing like the 8″ event that happened last time, but new snow nonetheless—so it looked to be a promising day. Even with 3″ of new snow, however, we found icy patches on nearly every run. The trails marked blue were extremely disappointing, since The Canyons seems to use the “blue square” marker to designate cat-tracks: moderately narrow, long and winding trails which are glorified access driveways. Many of them had lengths of flats; as a snowboarder, I can’t say how much I hate flats, moreso on “blue” runs where I don’t normally expect to encounter them.
I guess that’s what happens when you sacrifice terrain in order to build dozens of million dollar vacation homes in the middle of your f*cking ski resort. Then you’ve gotta build cat-tracks and service drives and shit, just so the poseurs who own the places and ski/ride three days a season can easily get to and from their McMansions.
At the end of the day, we made it back over to the gondola area, but decided to take the “Shortcut” lift so we could ride down to the cabrio.
That was a mistake.
Apparently, everyone wants to take the Shortcut lift. So many people, that it was not a shortcut at all. We probably spent 20 minutes waiting in the lift line. The gondola line would’ve had us onboard in about 5 minutes. From the top of Shortcut, you had to negotiate a typical end-of-day “back to base area” run: way overtracked, washed out and icy, and very, very crowded.
But it wasn’t all bad.
The highlight of the day was taking the Ninety-Nine 90 express chair to peak elevation (i.e., 9,900 feet) and making the short hike to summit. We snapped a few photos from the top, and made a 10-second descent through a field of over-tracked powder. The highlight of the highlight was when A-Train yard-saled, flew down the mountain about 20 feet and shot in to the air over the cat-track which was about a 5-foot dropoff. His skis and poles were scattered over about 100 feet of mountain. Brad hiked up to retrieve an errant ski, but before doing so decided to hand his board off to A-Train. However, they botched the hand-off and the K2 Fat Bob went on a solo trip screaming down the mountain. I took off after it but couldn’t catch it, and I watched it fly under the boundary rope.
Shit! That board could be anywhere or nowhere, and no downloading on the chair so Brad would have a hell of a hike to the base. Fortunately, it stopped in a tree-well about 5 feet past the boundary line, and I was able to retrieve it. I waited for Brad and A-Train, regrouped, and took off down the rest of the way without them, since we had left the Germaniac at the base and it had now been like 30 minutes so I figured he was wondering where we were.
That run down pretty much drained me. I don’t mind moguls, in fact I actually enjoy them, but when there are no “outs” and you’re six days in and you’ve got to take moguls from top to bottom, it just gets real tiring.
I had just an “OK” time at The Canyons this year, overshadowed by some very good days at PCMR and Brighton, and a superb day at Snowbird. I would consider going back to The Canyons again, but only on a rad powder day with someone who knew where to find the stashes. This time around, it just didn’t live up to my memories.
