Well, it’s been about five weeks since it started dumping snow in the mountains here in Utah. Alta got 12′ in December (that’s one tick mark) and January has started off with a bang with a massive storm that pounded the Sierras and Lake Tahoe area. Alta got 38″ from Friday til the skies cleared Monday morning. Pretty killer stuff.

So far I’ve had three awesome powder days, with this past Sunday being the best. The day I flew back to NY would’ve been even better I think, if it hadn’t been for a little debacle getting up the canyon. I tried driving up with my 2-wheel drive Acura (w/ snow tires), got pulled over and promptly sent back down the canyon. I didn’t get my first run in til 11am, and only got three in total (all wicked powder runs though) before I had to jet back to Salt Lake to catch a taxi to the airport.

But let’s talk about Sunday. The weather was unstable to say the least, and learning from that past experience I elected to take the bus up. Unfortunately I didn’t get to the park ‘n ride until 8:45 and it took two hours to get up the canyon due to a massive traffic jam (and cops checking cars for 4×4/chains undoubtedly) so my first run again wasn’t til 11. However, this time it didn’t matter because it snowed another 8″ while I was there, from 11 to 4. Almost every run was in knee deep powder and I found numerous stashes of untracked deep stuff each time. Some steep untracked tree runs had me grinning and whooping the whole way down. I wasn’t in the condition to huck cliffs due to a minor knee injury on Thursday but made the most of it anyhow. It was epic; the best ski day of my life thus far.

Best part is, it’s only gonna get better — hell, it’s only January! And I hear there’s another storm rolling in tomorrow night…