Diltsicle
Sundance is a beautiful thing for Park City. Sure, the town is crawling with annoying, angry, smoking, drinking Hollywood wannabes. There are more people on Main Street than at any other time during the year. And there are zero people on the ski slopes. In fact, the slopes are pretty deserted up until the next 3-day weekend (President’s day?)
A foot of fresh powder fell on Jupiter peak earlier this week. Jupiter is the back area of Park City Mountain Resort, and is actually as large as the rest of the entire resort combined. To get there, you have to take a half-mile-long road to the single 2-man slow chair lift that serves 8 expert (double-black) bowls. Due to the remote location, expert terrain, and old lift, Jupiter gets almost no attention despite its excellent snow conditions.
So, when I got stranded on the mountain with a big storm just 2 hours away, I was entirely alone.
Conditions were ideal. There was a foot of fresh powder, but not so much that it was impassable on a snowboard when traversing across the ridge to a bowl. I rode up the lift entirely alone in beautiful sunlight. I figured I could get in 2 or 3 runs before the big storm rolled in that afternoon. The liftie at the top of Jupiter lift didn’t even look up from his magazine when I got to the top. I strapped in and started cruising down the ridge to the East Face bowl.
Just about a quarter-mile away from the lift, my board dug into deep powder. Great. I tried to jump my way out. My foot came up, but my board did not.
I sat down to check out the damage. The main strap on my left binding had broken a nut and was now hanging limp from my board. I looked around to get a feeling for my situation. I was in the woods on Jupiter, all alone. There was no human in sight, nor had there been since the negligent liftie at the top. Directly below me was a rocky cliff too steep to climb down. The run I was aiming for was still a half mile away. The sun was clouding over with the coming storm.
I unstrapped my board and began slogging through knee-to-thigh-deep snow and crust toward the run. I made it about 50 yards before I had to sit down for a 5-minute break. I realized that despite living in Park City, I was not ready for heavy exercise at over 10,000 feet of elevation. I considered calling 411 and asking for the number of the ski patrol. I got out my cell phone, but I had no signal.
Sitting there, I realized that I could very seriously freeze to death all alone before anyone found me. I thought about Paul telling me just the day before not to ever, ever go to Jupiter alone. Man, he’d never let me live this down. At least it’ll make a good blog entry. And with that thought, I got back up and kept going.
After about 45 more minutes, I’d made it to the run. It was extremely steep (about a 45 degree incline). Too steep to stand stably, so I sat down and looked down at the impossibly distant lift. Walking down would easily take over an hour, but there was no possible way I could make it down on a board with only one binding.
Then I had the greatest idea of my life. I sat my butt down on my board between the bindings, with the board pointing forward between my legs. I grabbed on the front binding as tight as I could, and lifted up my feet.
If I had ridden down the slope on my board, powder would have buried my legs up to my knees or waist most of the way down. Since I was sitting, the powder completely covered my body during the ride down. I was cruising down the steepest slope around sitting on a loose board, and I was in a complete whiteout. I just prayed I wouldn’t hit a tree or go off an unknown cliff, because I had precious little chance of actually stopping once I started going.
That was the greatest sledding ride of my entire life :-) I made it to the lift in less than 10 minutes. I had the liftie call ski patrol for a ride to the base of the resort. While I waited for them, I shook a ridiculous mass of snow out of my coat, my pockets, even the vent holes in my helmet (there was still enough snow in my boots to make 2 snowballs when I got home).
On the medical snowmobile, I couldn’t help but laugh as I looked up the hill at the huge, 3-foot-wide swath I cut out of the snow on my crazy ride down on my butt.