Honeymoon Day 7 - One Final Pow Day!

Well, we left the best for last. We awoke to yet another fluffy powder day. Probably another foot of fresh powder on top of what had already fallen from the sky since Sunday. A total of four feet, reportedly.

In our haste, we forgot to bring both cameras. It was a blue-bird day to start, and would have been perfect for picture-taking. We ran into a couple guys from the local daily taking pictures in the epic powder.

In contrast to yesterday, we high-tailed it for the far side of the resort, eager to hike and ski Bald Mountain, or "Baldy" as it seems to be called by the locals. This inbounds backcountry terrain requires a 30-minute boot-pack. We almost brought climbing skins, but thinking back to every other inbounds hike-to terrain, it's always a boot-pack. Literally a bunch of steps going up the mountain. Usually ski patrol sets the path when they first go up to do avalanche control. It reminded us of Murdoch Peak at The Canyons. Here's a picture from Tuesday. It's the round hill in the background. The best skiing, and longest fall-line was on the far right, off the "nose" and either side of the stand of trees.


We did continue our habit of wearing our avalanche transceivers. There has been a recent spat of "post-control" avalanches at ski resorts. Never hurts to at least wear a transceiver.

I think we planned on skiing Baldy once. We wound up skipping lunch and hiking it twice, and I went back for a third run solo. It was that good. Katie got some of the few "face shots" of her life. She just isn't heavy enough to go fast or sink into the powder. I got face shots aplenty even on my fat skis. But we were both aided by the fact we were making telemark turns.

I feel compelled to tell a funny story. During the first run down Baldy, Katie's ski came off. Turns out the bindings were WAY loose. It took her forever to dig out of the resulting powder crash and get her ski back on properly. Later on, we decided to ski the opposing bowl called Andy's Gold. From Bald Mountain we could see some sweet powder stashes that looked hard to get to, and therefore relatively untracked. At the top of the Bald Hill chairlift, I helped Katie tighten her telemark bindings. When she went to put the ski back on, she inadvertently kicked her ski down the hill. Telemark bindings don't have brakes, so her ski took off straight down the fall line. Before I knew what was happening Katie let out one of her characteristic explicatives and was diving down the hill after her ski. She came up just short. Some others nearby started yelling to warn anyone downhill. Fortunately the ski harpooned into a soft mogul about 100 yards away. Lucky for us, it didn't hit anyone.

Well, that does it for our official honeymoon. Overall it was great. No injuries, no major fights, we still love each other. We're off to the airport. We're actually on the first flight together to Salt Lake City. But then going our separate ways: Katie eastward to home and Mike westward to drill weekend and three more weeks on the road with film festivals, trade shows, and hopefully some more skiing!