Utah Dreamin'

Utah Dreamin'

by Julie Hubbert

Publication Date: February 1997

While naturalness is an unquestioned condition of Utah snow, skiers the world over agree that there is also a super-naturalness about it. Which is to say that there is snow, there is powder snow, and then there is Utah powder snow. This is not a frivolous distinction. This snow is different. Some say it is because the vast salty lake to the north leaches the moisture from the clouds as they roll across the valley toward the mountains. Others say it is the valley itself, a narrow, arid corridor bordered by two mountain ranges, the Oquirrhs to the west and the Wasatch to the east, that creates the strange snow. Then there is the theory, popular with Coloradans, that the snow is in fact ash, fallout from the Tooele Hazardous Waste Incinerator (America's biggest toxic trash compactor twenty miles west of Salt Lake City). But that's just the jealousy talking.

While the origin of this snow is still open for debate, its merits, its unique qualities are not. It is simply the lightest stuff on earth. On the periodic chart of snow elements, it is hydrogen. Its atomic weight barely registers. On the spectrum of visible light, it's a microwave. On the scale of natural fibers, it is the down from a baby gosling. On the list of rare champagnes, it's a 1862 Lafite-Rothschild. On the list of endangered species, it's a Komodo dragon. I cannot describe this snow, except to say that I skied into and completely through a ten foot drift once, and it was the finest white stuff I've ever inhaled. I still haven't come down off that high.

But the snow would be merely excellent if it didn't have truly exceptional terrain to cling to. For serious skiers, that terrain centers around two canyons: Big and Little Cottonwood. Big Cottonwood is lower, its slopes are gentler. The deep, acute angles of Little Cottonwood canyon, on the other hand, rise sharply from the valley floor with all the terribleness of a gothic cathedral. You get a kink in your neck trying to view the peaks from a car window.

There are only two resorts up this canyon, and in terms of presentation and philosophy they couldn't be more different. Snowbird, the lower of the two in terms of elevation, has condominiums, a fifteen-story hotel with a luxury restaurant and an outdoor swimming pool on the roof, numerous shops and restaurants, and a tram that runs to the top of the mountain. All that, and it still suffers from an identity crisis. Locals find it too commercial. Coloradans find it too anemic. What, no movie stars, no Chanel boutique, no Caribou Club?

When the Salt Lake locals do go to the resorts, on those occasions when the backcountry is too dangerous, when there is too much snow (if that's not a contradiction of terms), they go all the way to the end of the road, to the top of the canyon, to the edge of the world. They go to the resort that in another country would simply be called High. They go to Alta. No hotels, no tram, no high-speed quad, no snowboarders. There are multi-million dollar condos, but they keep a discreet distance, appearing more as an extension of Snowbird than a part of Alta. In general, in fact, there seems to be a protective bubble around the place.

Apart from the new Goldminer's Daughter, the main lodge, Alta remains a remarkably quiet and unpretentious little ski area. Skiing there is not unlike entering a time warp. Things there are pretty much the same as when the great Alf Engen built it in the 40's, when wooden skis, long thong bindings and the hideous spiral fractures they caused were the order of the day. Back when Stein Erickson's signature style of skiing-the sweeping, lazy stemchristie turn-echoed on ski slopes throughout the country. The Germania chair lift at Alta, and its premier black diamond run High Rustler, is pretty much as it was in the 50's when my mom swooshed down it in her black Bogner tuck-in pants and quilted jacket.

The civility of the sport and the spirit of Engen and Erickson has somehow been preserved in the new crop of telemark skiers that now frequent the resort. Snow quality and stylistic integrity are still quietly idealized. This enduring mind set is still expressed in the price of the lift ticket, which last season was a mere $29.

Strangely, of all the places in Utah's Wasatch mountains, it is the backcountry that has seen the greatest change. It used to be that when you put your climbing skins on, you toured the backcountry in relative obscurity. If you ran into anyone, it was members of the avalanche forecast team, and only occasionally another tourer. Now it is not unusual to hike to the top of Cardiac Bowl, across from Alta's parking lot, only to meet a helicopter and have your solitude shattered and your efforts preempted by a cadre of overweight Hollywood executives.

Now days there is an ongoing public debate in Salt Lake City about backcountry ethics. If a helicopter pilot spots a team of backcountry tourers making for an untracked bowl should he respect their efforts and take his less stalwart clients to another peak? It's a problem that only promises to get worse. And yet it is a problem that is still not likely to squelch the enthusiasm of even the most jaded local. Because as long as that powder snow still exists, as long as there is still room for one more set of tracks, the Wasatch mountains and Salt Lake City will still be the destination location for serious skiers. At least for a few more years, until the 2002 Winter Olympics steamrolls over everything sacred in the canyons.

When my eyes first fixed on Southwest Airlines advertisement, the sensation when was remarkably similar. The price of reliving some of my most cherished memories was so scorchingly low it made my head itch. Could it be true, could $124 really be the only obstacle standing between me and true snow, between me and gastro-intestinal utopia? Then it happened. My imaginary landscape began to fade, and the mundane world of numbers, of taxes and car payments, the world where 124 is not only a rational number but a significant portion of the rent, that world began to intrude on my reverie. My head throbbed, my breathing became labored, and the room began to spin. Just before I lost consciousness, I glanced one more time at the page, at the ad that had so transported me. And there, in the fine print, I found my salvation, my will to live: major credit cards accepted.