This was a week of wild contrasts. We finally got a lot of snow, then a lot people, then a lot of wind.
I skied Deer Valley on Saturday. Odds are that you did, too, as it’s hard to imagine there were any people anywhere else on the face of the Earth. It was Martin Luther King Weekend, so lots of visitors in town.
The new snow lured out even grumpy locals like me who normally wouldn’t get near the place on a holiday. Then throw in a closure on the Little Cottonwood Canyon Road, and it was a real mess. Whatever they did to limit the Ikon crush from Salt Lake didn’t seem to be working.
I got a late start after digging the house out, and drove over. Parking would be impossible, so I took the Richardson Flat bus. I worked my way up to Empire and discovered the lines were backed up beyond the maze on both sides, with the singles line extending nearly to the Ruby chair on one side, and the ski racks outside the Montage on the other. To their credit, the Deer Valley lift crew kept it moving efficiently.
The skiing was great, but after three runs, the crowd was just too much. The lines weren’t shorter anywhere else, so back on the bus and home.
Park City Mountain had their own challenges with wind shutting down the Canyons side of things and huge lines at the Park City Mountain base as people shuttled over. Rough weather is certainly a fundamental part of skiing. Things won’t always run smoothly, and both resorts did a good job dealing with what Mother Nature dished out. A long lift line is a lot better than sending people up before patrol has cleared things.
My friends tried to coax me out on Sunday, and I declined. I’d had enough of that.
Monday, I was dressed and heading out the door when my friend called and said it was all on wind hold. A veritable hurricane had set in, and everything that hadn’t blown to Wyoming was closed. They got things put back together and opened later in the day, but by then, I was on to other things.
We don’t get a wind event like that very often. I’m glad I wasn’t out in it, and appreciate the employees who were.
On Tuesday, the tempest had subsided, the crowds evaporated, the sun was out, and we banged out lap after lap in Empire Bowl and never waited for another chair to load. A spectacular day of skiing. You win some and you lose some.
I’ve ridden the Richardson Flat bus several times now, and it actually works quite well. Most of the time it’s not too busy. While the bus has a schedule that it more or less sticks to, traffic getting to the parking lot is always unpredictable. Sometimes I hit it just right. Other times, I sit in the car for a while.
It’s never been crowded, so I was surprised on Saturday. The bus was so packed that it would have been impossible to shove another person, even a small child, in there. Everybody was dressed for the cold, but the heater was raging, and as the bus lurched through the stop and go traffic, it became uncomfortable. Nobody got carsick, though another lap in the roundabout would have done the trick. That’s unusual, and for the most part, there are plenty of seats, room to take your helmet off and get comfortable.
It gets the job done, but there’s nothing remotely welcoming about Richardson Flat. It’s out on the tundra, and other than a very small bus shelter and a restroom trailer, there’s nothing by way of creature comforts. Siberia comes to mind. The message is more or less, “We wish you weren’t here, getting in the way of our better-paying guests.”
If the usage picks up, it might be reasonable to get a food truck there selling coffee in the morning and snacks in the afternoons, though for now, there aren’t enough people predictably using it to make that possible. It works, and on busy days, I will keep using it.
The fact that it’s become necessary to park people on the tailings pond is another issue. Somehow, for most of the 60 years of commercial-scale skiing in Park City, we’ve managed to park cars at the resort bases and shuttle hotel guests relatively short distances to the lifts.
In the past few years, that became impossible as the numbers of people in town, and our commuter-based workforce, have exploded. So has the traffic, and now we have gridlock and a parking problem.
The remote lots at Richardson and Ecker Hill help smooth out the peaks, but there comes a time when we need to admit that full is full, and quit stuffing more of everything into an overcrowded space.
It’s like foie gras — when the goose is force-fed just right, the liver gets huge and fatty. It’s apparently a great delicacy if you are into that kind of thing. There’s a sweet spot. If you over stuff the goose, it explodes and makes a real mess.
Either way, the poor goose is dead.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.