Over twenty years in the making...

We have been talking about going out west skiing for over twenty years and the stars finally aligned this weekend to make that happen. Mark and I met up in Minneapolis on Thursday afternoon and caught our flight out to Salt Lake that evening. In classic Hanson fashion, we checked into our hotel and then proceeded to drive around for 15 minutes trying to find a place to grab dinner. Final destination...McDonald's right next door to our hotel...30 yards from the place we parked at the hotel.

The next morning, Mark and I headed up to Snowbird and proceeded to lace up our pink boots and walkers as we meandered down the hill like a couple of old ladies.

To make ourselves feel better about that, we made up the excuse that we were just saving our legs for the arrival of the "electric ape" who was scheduled to meet us at the Snowbird tram at 1:00 PM...his flight arrived 1.5 hours late, but the Pontiac G8 hit mach 2 on the way up the mountain and he was at the Snowbird tram 15 minutes behind schedule.

We got a picture of his better half.

Snowbird pretty much put us to bed that day. We ended the day exhausted, but still managed to go to Park City to grab dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We were up at 3:30 the next morning and the accompanying video captures the air better than words can do it justice.

Saturday's destination was Alta and we threw all caution into the wind. 6 - 8" of new snow and there wasn't a double black we didn't hit including "Alf's High Rustler" which we had to remove our skis to traverse across a rock ledge before we could get down into the top part of the run. From there it was straight down at a 45 for what must have been almost 1/8 mile. Needless to say it was an adrenaline rush like no other.

Speaking of adrenaline rush, how about the vat of chili we tried to consume at lunch.

The trip was amazing...beyond my expectations.

Thanks Hunts and Don. I could not have imagined a better time.