Swampy goes to Soli 1-30 and 1-31

[swamphox]

As all great redneck stories begin, "There I was..."

except it was to think, "If you go down that, you'll kill yourself" That kind of summed up my whole time there when it came to anything black. The only one I hit was the rollercoaster which was bumpy and pretty steep but covered with powder. The only reason I went down it was because I saw some old dudes do it and they seemed to have survived without breaking a hip.



I'd always half way dismissed the "this would be a blue out west" statement as snobbery, but it's true. Easier blues were probably about like upper omg at cat or the blacks at app, mid diffifulty blues would'e been comprable to mogul ridge at ober or white lightning, while the harder ones were like whoopdeedoo at sugar or the bowl at wolf



It's cool how immense the place is. From any point at the resort you're only able to see about a third of it even though it's all wide open. Pictures don't do it justice. That being said, on to the pictures....















From our room at the Inn, those were the views....^







Lipht shot from Apex







Looking back from Apex







Looking across the resort from the eagle express







Sundancer







I spent a lot of time on the Sunshine Bowl





I was told Park city is on the other side of that hill





A view from the top of the eagle







I only went down this one once....







Looking down from the top of the sunshine bowl







Looking at trees from Sunrise on day 2







This run under the lift line was the one black I tried.







I followed the sun most of the day on Monday, visibility is important to me despite impression given by my wearing a camera between my eyes.







So much snow there was some really cool layering on all the roofs, reminiscent of miniature glaciers







The snow could be measured in 1.1 Katy's







My view while I ate lunch at the grill mid mountain







Lunchtime sunshine







More lunchtime sunshine



Some notes:



Snow conditions were "bad" by their standards and matched the best day of skiing I'd ever had (12-28-10 at cat)...people were constantly complaining and all I could do was laugh....



These people freak out about ice....



I got some atomic fat skis as my demos and they took a little getting used to but were great once I got used to them. Lots of float....



My new blind spot mount worked beautifully, an eye bolt and some jb weld did the trick...wearing my camera in it got me my own private seat on any lift I got on.



The package I got included a lot of food and this was a good thing. The food was awesome and most of the places you went were staffed by college kid ski bums who were all very nice people. It was pretty expensive though.

don't get me wrong, it was worth it, especially the breakfasts.



Getting back was pretty rough, 2 canceled flights, one routed through Dallas, then one routed through Chicago were canceled. Finally a direct flight from SLC to ATL got us back.



Now for all the video goodness my blind spot mount can deliver. In glorious HD







This is mainly the sunshine bowl. The tune is Alo****ra by Pogo







These are a couple of laps off the Apex lift. The tune is a remix of the doomsday zone from sonic the hedgehog.







This was a lap of fun off the sunrise lift



That's all...it was fun and I emerged unhurt which ended up being my goals. After looking at honeycomb canyon and a lot of the areas around I have loads of respect for Kendog and those with him as well as skiing rules.

[knoxskier]

Nice pics. Certainly degree of truth to the black here but blue west statement. Of course, the west has terrain that just don't exist around here but one difference that I notice is the length of the steep terrain... We have some steep terrain here but it only lasts a short distance. Out west it can be steep the entire run.



PS. Solitude claims to have the steepest groomers in Utah.

[Bronco]

Nicely done, Swampy!

[swamphox]

@knoxskier 238847 wrote:Nice pics. Certainly degree of truth to the black here but blue west statement. Of course, the west has terrain that just don't exist around here but one difference that I notice is the length of the steep terrain... We have some steep terrain here but it only lasts a short distance. Out west it can be steep the entire run.



PS. Solitude claims to have the steepest groomers in Utah.



A lot of their groomers are done by securing the machine to a winch and pulling it up the mtn....that came from ski patrol. Some crazy steep stuff...some of them just looked like walls

[davidski]

swamphox Great trip report



For people who haven't skiied outside this region you sum up well the difference between SE blacks an western blues -- ain't life just all relative



I like the vids but they were driving me nuts because I kept thinking --ok he's going to turn of and hit that--no; ok this one.. no....

but I loved the turn you made at around the .37 mark on the last video...yes



What a trip lo0oks like fun



as an aside, those are some steep trees

[skiing rules]

pics NEVER do anything justice.

[davidski]

what? they aren't steep trees?



to me that picture looks like 40+ degrees -- pretty crazy glade skiing

[teledave]

Only about 2 weeks away for me, bring on the pow!

[jt3]

great report. anytime its that tracked out the locals complain. i get it though. I guess is you rode it all the time, you would get spoiled too. but, so much terrain to cover and that utah snow is Sooo good, its hard not to have fun when you are from the east coast.

[marzski]

Great TR! Soli is on the list of possible places to go next week. Fly out Tuesday. Can't wait!



Glad you didn't get stuck IN Chicago.