Park City Mountain Resort Blog

Earth Day - everday is Earth Day

I find it hard to believe that we're nearing the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (the first one was observed back in 1970). At Park City Mountain Resort, the environment is a big event for us as we live and work in the Wasatch Mountains and we want to continue this lifestyle for us as well as for our children. Therefore for us, Earth Day isn't just April 22nd, it's all year long!
I'm excited that Park City Mountain Resort continues to expand our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint through various programs such as recycling, bio-fuels and CFL usage although the big news is that we recently committed to 100% offsetting of power from renewable resources via RECs (renewable energy credits) - see our environmental site www.saveoursnow.net and look for the press release for more details. Saveoursnow.net also give many more details on what we're currently doing, planning on doing and what you can do to help and educate yourself and others. Here are some great links to some other sites:

• www.keepwintercool.org
• www.theclimateproject.org
• www.wecansolveit.org

We've also been in the news recently talking about our environmental programs:

• The Park Record - Soul of the Green Machine
• KPCW - Radio Interview With Brent Giles and Krista Parry (link will download an MP3 file)

Happy B-Day Earth Day, we'll keep celebrating all year long!

Yes, It Is April

It has been quite a long time since I last posted; early March I think. Sorry about that, but it is a measure of how good the season was for us. It never stopped snowing long enough for me to have the chance to sit down and think of something useful to say. The best I could've come up with would have been something like, "snowing again; gotta go home, dig out the house and go to bed so I can get up at 4 AM and do it all over tomorrow."
That said, some final numbers for the season from our standpoint:
406 inches of snowfall at the Summit weather plot; the first time in 34 years we've gone over 400!
500 inches of snowfall at the Jupiter weather plot; only the 3rd time in resort history we've hit that number.
On closing day we had 10 FEET of settled snow depth at our Jupiter plot and every chairlift open (Jupiter Peak too!); the first time in a long time many of us can remember that happening. Judging by the party at the top of Jupiter Peak on Sunday afternoon, I'd say many many locals were pleased with that.
Since there is still SO MUCH snow and all the runs are still in great condition, I'm sure there's many locals out there who plan on "touring" the resort until the snow melts. As we leave the resort and head off for multiple adventures outta town, Colin, David and I just want to leave the locals with a reminder that there is no more avalanche control work being done. Treat the area like the back country and use all appropriate precautions (good route finding and travel skills, along with beacon, probe, and shovel). Especially if we get a rapid warm up when there could be a REAL danger of wet loose and slab avalanches.
Have a safe spring and summer and we hope to see you again next winter.

Enjoy the weekend - here's what is coming for next season...

It looks like we're going to finally get some Spring skiing and riding conditions, just in time for closing weekend. So, get out and enjoy the last turns for the 2007-2008 season - it sure has been a fun one!
In other news, I'm finally able to pass along the big news that I hinted at a couple of weeks ago, our planned capital improvements for the 2008-2009 winter season - check them out here and here's a picture to give you a hint of what we're going to be up to.

Is this seriously April?!

I admit it, I directly copied the title of this post from today's "Picture of the Day."

I also have to say that I completely agree with Matt's description of yesterday as "Are you serious?"  I took a bunch of runs up on McConkey's, Pioneer and Jupiter and once again I had another fantastic Monday morning up on the mountain, as a matter of fact, our run down Dead Tree off the High West traverse was one of the best runs I've skied all season!
The forecast is looking like we've got a least one more good storm coming in before our closing day, this coming Sunday, check out this graphic I just saw on the NWS website (I love the red text box!)

I hope to see everyone up on the mountain tomorrow, because there was hardly anyone out yesterday, enjoy the new snow!

Spring Powder Day!

I thought that perhaps we might be coasting into springtime with some blue sky days to ski corn snow and hang out on the decks around the mountain for awhile...I thought wrong!!! I awoke this morning to a good half foot of snow in my driveway and as I made my way up the mountain there was up to a foot or more in spots. Scott's Bowl was nearly bottomless and after I got a few face shots on my first run down I had to head back up for a 2nd run, which was just as good as the first. It was hard to take time away from the riding to get video, but here's a quick sample of what I was able to compile - I don't think it does the day justice, but take a peek and see what the last day of March was like up here!

 

Easter Eggs, Spring Skiing and the US Freestyle Championships

Yesterday saw people waiting in line at Payday to get out and participate in our 'big kids' Easter Egg hunt:

I know they must have had fun because we hid over 250 eggs on the mountain with great prizes including two Golden Eggs that had 2008-2009 Season Passes in them!

There was plenty of excitement for our 'little kid' guests as well, check out their Easter Egg hunting ground (yes all those dots are eggs!):

Here are the kids lining up:

And...

Ready...

Set...

GO!!!

What a great morning and day to be up in the mountain here at Park City!

I snuck out for a couple of runs this morning and while spring conditions are setting in during the afternoon, I found some perfect corduroy on Crescent/Waterfall. Be sure to check our Signature Runs page and our snow report page to see where the corduroy will be tomorrow and see this post from a couple of seasons ago to read some tips I have about how to ski or ride Park City Mountain Resort in the springtime.

Lastly, if you're up this Friday, be sure to stop by the Eagle Superpipe to see the best halfpipe skiers in the country compete in the 2008 Sprint US Freestyle Championships. There will also be events at the Utah Olympic Park and Deer Valley on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday with awards parties on Thursday, Friday and Saturday each evening at 5:30pm at the Town Lift Plaza!

Tubing at Gorgoza Park

We stopped by Gorgoza Park, this past Sunday and took a couple of quick video clips that probably don't show just how much fun we were having at the tubing hill:

The great news is that you have an extra week to enjoy the tubing at Gorgoza Park as they are now scheduled to close after April 6, 2008.
Although Gorgoza Park has extended their season by a week, it does not look likely like we (PCMR) will extend past our scheduled closing date of April 13, 2008. The reason for this is that we have a ton of work to do to get ready for our summer operations which are scheduled to open on May 23, 2008! There will be a lot of shoveling needed to unbury our Alpine Slide, we'll need to do some maintenance on Payday Lift and we will also be needing to move a lot of snow to get started on a major project that we'll be posting about soon (hint, hint, wink, wink).

Where did this storm come from?!

Holy smokes! I wasn't planning on heading up for any real skiing today - we were 'supposed' to be scouting around for some upcoming photo shoots, but once we got up to McConkey's at around 11 and saw that the 'Pearly Gates' to Jupiter Peak were open we just had to take a closer look (for the shoot of course). I dropped into P-Zone and suddenly I realized that somehow we seem to have gotten more than the foot of snow that this storm had supposedly dropped, check out this skier:

After that we decided we needed a bit more recon on Jupiter Peak so we headed back for round two. We figured that it would be worthwhile to hike to the top and after dropping in through Twilight I can honestly say that the snow today was definitely up there with the storm cycles of January and February - it was awful good:

I thought I was ready for spring skiing and hitting the decks around the mountain, but after today, I guess I'm ready for more winter, bring it on!

World Superpipe Championships - What a Day!

This past Saturday saw fantastic competition in our Eagle Superpipe in all three events. Torah Bright held off a hard charging Kelly Clarke to win in the women's snowboard event while Shaun White, with a sore knee, took home his 2nd consecutive victory and then to wrap things up Jossi Wells took top spot in the Men's Ski comp. Here's a few photos in case you weren't able to make it up:
Torah showing her style

Shaun floating above Ski Team Ridge

Jossi tweaking out an air

Here are some links to other sites with great WSC pix:
http://www.snowboard-mag.com/node/30231
http://www.transworldsnowboarding.com/gallery.jsp?ID=1000021342
http://snowboardermag.com/features/news/wsc-finals-08/
http://community.freeskier.com/articles/article.php?article_id=2139

PS - Thanks to all who helped put on another great WSC event - terrain park crew, race department crew, f & b department, grooming, patrol and everyone else up here on Saturday!

Snowiest February on Record

It's official. February's snowfall of 128 inches was the snowiest one on record. Blowing past February of 1998, which was the only season we exceeded 500 inches, by 20 inches.

Bryan who works in our IT department carved out some time in his day to hit up the freshies. Days like these have been more common than not this season. Check out how much snow there is:

Of course, all of this great snow means fantastic skiing and as luck would have it, this is the one winter that I had to take care of medical issues and couldn't ski! I went into the hospital on January 29, which fell right in the snow cycle that Brian talked about here. You can't imagine how difficult it is to be sitting in a hospital bed watching it dump outside knowing that you can't enjoy the mountain, in all of it's might and glory.

And if that is not enough, March traditionally is one of our snowiest months. Will we exceed the 500 inches mark before the season ends? We are well on our way there. If you are lucky enough to find yourself on the mountain the next six weeks you won't be dissappointed. Blue Bird Skies + Great snow = An Amazing Day.

Please ski a run for me!