After my morning business meeting that had abruptly brought me to Salt Lake, I decided to grab lunch on my way up to the slopes. As usual, I got confused as to which interstate Palace Burgers is adjacent to, and ended up at Astro Burgers instead. (Note all the fresh fluffy snow, even in town!)

Astro Burgers' combo was okay but certainly no substitute for Palace Burgers' offering. They dissolved the banana into liquid in the shake even, sheez.

The road up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Wow, is this really April?

Despite an engine that wanted to stall at every stop light, a clunky transmission, and a pronounced pull to the right, my POS rent-a-car made it up to Brighton by about 2pm. I bought a "twilight pass" that's good from 12:30pm to 9pm, and headed off to ski.

The sun even came out and shone brightly on the fresh Utah powder for a while. Perfecto!

After a couple hours, my out-of-shape legs were absolutely throbbing, so I skied back to the car (conveniently parked about 100 feet from the lift) and wolfed down some Advil and Gatorade. Note the license plate about to fall off. And no, it wasn't me who had thrashed this heap.

Oh yeah, great day for windsurfing. Yikes!!!

As twilight came on, the late-afternoon snowboard crowd started arriving. Interesting dynamics at Brighton.

Cruising off the Snake Creek Express lift.

With my Advils digested and legs somewhat revived, I skied the supposedly double-black Hard Coin glade a few times. Nicely spaced trees make this my favorite run at Brighton. Pretty challenging but not so gnarly that it wears you out.

I skied until about 7:30. Being April, it was still not quite dark, which was quite a contrast to the night skiing I've done here before in December when it's dark by 5:00. The extended daylight hours make the afternoon/night program at Brighton even more ideal for a first day of skiing.

The next day, I got up early and headed up to Alta. It was cold and had snowed overnight, but the day was mostly clear, which made for simply superb ski conditions. Instead of the refrozen corn snow and wet slush I had expected for late Spring, there was another day of classic light, dry Utah powder. Woo hoo!

One of the two high-speed detachables Alta recently installed to replace classic slow lifts. Amazing. Given Alta's reputation for being happily stuck in the past, such upgrades are pretty remarkable, and work really well. The new seat cushions are great too!

I bought a $10 unlimited race pass and with the benefit of the new high-speed lift, made 6 runs through the course, making about a 0.5 sec improvement each run until the end. Still ended up some 4 seconds off the hotshot kids though, which is pretty typical. I've never really had the knack for true slalom technique, banging the gates and carving through the ruts, but I always enjoy trying anyway.

Lunchtime view from the base-area deck.

A little sunshine!

Purty.

After lunch, I headed up to the Supreme lift, and snapped a few folks who seemed to be really enjoying skiing the steep stuff under the lift.

Even with all the new snow, a few rocks peeked through this steep section. Later, I had an unfortunate run-in with this very one, which despite knowing it was there, I managed to head right for it anyway. Dead stop -- wipeout! Woo hoo!

"Yeah, that looks good." (Said to self on the lift)

Well, I can't say I wasn't warned about the unmarked hazards. After two more pretty good wipeouts, I eventually made it down that "good looking" slope. I'm just not in good enough shape to tackle such terrain with the necessary aplomb!

The view toward Snowbird from the top of Sugarloaf. Visible down the ridge is the top of the new lift coming up from the backside of Snowbird that allows the two areas to connect now.

As I was leaving at 4:30, I stopped and watched the last few folks pound down the epic Alf's High Rustler, which I haven't skied in a few years and was looking forward to tackling myself the next day.

More of that amazing snow.

Too bad it's so crowded, eh?

Unfortunately, this is the view that greeted me the next morning at Alta -- an ugly combination of wet snow and total fog cover. I sat in the car and listened to Car Talk for about an hour, hoping the clouds would lift and at least give some visibility, but it was clearly socked in for the day so I decided to bail out. High Rustler would have to wait for next time.

I had a few hours to kill before my flight, so I decided to go find that damn Krispy Kreme I *knew* was somewhere around my motel but I had been unable to find in almost an hour of driving around. So I tracked down the billboard, and used the super-duper-ultra-zoom to snap a picture and be able to read the address directions.

Sure enough, I had been within about a quarter-mile of it, but it's kinda over a hill by itself and I just hadn't quite gone far enough. Tragically though, they were making HOT CAKE DOUGHNUTS instead of glazed ones when I finally arrived. Pretty tasty, but again, not the real thing. Bogus!

Still with a few hours to kill, I decided to drive out to Copperton and check out the Kennecott Mine, the world's largest. I arrived at the gate, but was told the visitor center was closed due to "bad weather." Heck, if the weather was good I'd have been skiing! Oh well.

A whole new suburban town with a mall and everything has popped up about 5 miles from the real Copperton and pretty much killed off the old town.

"Ore House" -- Lo, those wacky Mormons!

Always on the lookout nowadays, I spotted this $3 RV Dump at the gas station on my way back to the airport. Make a note.

The mine's being closed gave me just enough time to buzz by Palace Burgers and finally enjoy the real thing -- Charbroiled Bacon Cheesburger and Banana Shake. Even though I was still quite stuffed full of doughnuts, it was still an excellent way to conclude another ski trip.