Alta/Snowbird - Utah

Skiing and riding sure can be a pain in the ass sometimes. Not the sport itself, but waking up and driving a couple hours, walking from your car, putting on your equipment and waiting in treacherous lift lines. Before you can get your ski tips up on the summit, it’s 11 am and the sun is on its way towards the horizon.

Alta and Snowbird – located about 30 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah in Little Cottonwood Canyon – makes a full day of skiing a reality without having to rent a ritzy slope side lodge. Grab a hotel in nearby Utah surburbia and you’re at the base lode before you wipe the morning breath from your tongue. In fact, with public transportation hauling people to the mountain as a side choice, you’d think the catch would be groomed cruisers and endless lift lines. After all aren’t you supposed to work for the good shit? Well, once you ride to the top of the tram at Snowbird on a powder day, you’ll get to work and forget about the other "work" sitting in your cubicle.

At an elevation of 11,000 feat and a vertical drop of 3,240 feet, Snowbird may lie within 15 songs on your ipod of the airport, but the terrain is no shortcoming. With 383 inches of the fluff already this winter and approximately 150 inches a month, powder in the Wasatch mountains is breakfast served almost daily.

With steeple tight chutes, hit or miss glades and a big mountain flair of bowls, the Bird is a fall line dream. With no room for traversing, its all downhill on the mountains various peaks. Take the tram to the top and you can ski to the right along the High Baldy traverse to a series of chutes the spill towards the Pervian Gulch which funnel towards a handful of straight shot runs to home base.

Take the tram to skiers left and there’s more of everything a skier/boarder needs to stay busy for weeks. With a more heavily area of trees and unforgiving terrain, both east and west Snowbird boasts its share of challenging thrills. Check out the Thunder Bowl and Tiger Trail for easy first tracks and head back up on the Gad 2 Lift for more of the same. However, the jewel of Snowbird is Mineral Basin – an open back bowl of the mountain with a plethora of chutes and open vistas, where you set the rules. Although its often cloudy in the mountains’ higher parts, the Basin has enough soft spots to make blind skiing a worthwhile cause. With two high speed quads serving the Basin, its easy to spend more time burning your quads than itching your sweaty head in the lift-line. Pain is pain, but at Snowbird, if you bring your game face, pain is all relative to the "sick" terrain.

Snowbird’s next door neighbor Alta, is famous for a lot of things – its wide-open big mountain feel, no snowboard policy and its throwback style. Steep also takes on a new meaning at Alta, particularly the terrain served off the less skied Wildcat lift, where trees and steep degrees schmooze with your poles and lower legs. However it’s the big open bowls on Alta that dash Alta with its true big mountain attitude. Snow bowl palaces like The Ballroom, West Rustler, East Castle, East Greely and the ingeniously named Glory Hole, provide about as much fun as you can possible have with goggles and boots strapped on.

Devil’s Castle, off the SugarLoaf lift is allowed to hike up to challenge your confidence in waist high powder, when all avalanche dangers cease. The Supreme lift boasts chutes that rival Jackson Hole and opens up to skier’s right to Catherine’s area – a vastly untouched playground of terrain. At Alta, hiking is common fare to find the good stuff, but once you find it, another hike is already written in before 4:00 hits. Spend a week at Alta, and you’ll still not have hit everything – there’s just that much terrain to cover. Thankfully, you won’t have to be using much edge, just bring your powder stance between December and March– even the packed powder is smooth running.

Snowbird and Alta erase the hassle out of big mountain skiing and make it all easy. Sure these aren’t hidden out of the way resorts, but than again, if you save a day of driving for a half-day on the mountain, it’s worth it. The only thing that will be a pain in the ass, is well your sore bottom after a day, week, month or winter in the Wasatch mountains.