With the winery closed and a boatload of vacation up my sleeve we decided to do Christmas a little different this year… The ski passes we have for the 2018/19 season allow us to ski at a bunch of resorts across the west coast and into Canada, four of them are within 25 minutes of Salt Lake City so we rented a great little ABNB in Sandy for our first white Christmas as a family. Cheryl and Chris joined us for the week, lots of driving for those two as they’d moved from Phoenix to Portland the week prior, only to turn around and drive all the way back to Utah for Christmas week! We stopped off to take Great Grandma Gladys to lunch on the way to Utah, not often she gets to see Lisa and her great grandchildren so it was nice to take her out for Christmas Lunch.
Cheryl and Chris were delayed one day so the Valtenbergs squad headed to Snowbird on our first day. Snowbird’s a gnarly mountain looking up from the base, full of cliffs, chutes and steep pitches. A huge tram like the one at Jackson Hole takes skiers and boarders to the peak. The kids were quite enamored with the tram, it was pretty huge, the capacity of the single dangling tram car was 130 people! Snowbird really is a resort for advanced skiers and boarders, but the Mineral Basin area in the rear of the resort has a good collection of runs that the kids could tackle. Unfortunately on our second run Max got a little ahead of himself on a short but steep pitch and I had to ski across the run to stop him getting out of control. In the process of tackling him to the ground I must have either fallen on top of his right arm or he must have tweaked it as he fell, but either way he was in an excruciating amount of pain following the crash. Lisa and I both saw our ski week flash before our eyes… He skied down the remainder of the run with me, and we eventually got him to the ski patrol station at the top of the Snowbird tram. The ski patroller who helped out – Nat – was great with him, poor Max almost fainted from pain as two ski patrollers gently bent his arm into a splint for the ride back down the tram. Fortunately for us Snowbird has a very well provisioned medical clinic right at the base of the tram (I have a feeling the resort sees its fair share of injuries!) so Max was getting seen to within a few minutes of disembarking the tram. The doctors at the Snowbird clinic all have some form of orthopedic training, such a godsend to have them available on the mountain. Max had a few initial x-rays taken, and without any sign of a fracture the docs were leaning toward a diagnosis of Nursemaid’s Elbow but they couldn’t be certain without additional x-rays taken at a different angle. In the process of having his third set of x-rays taken the tech (intentionally) rotated Max’s forearm in a way that popped the radius bone back into place after screaming like I’ve never heard him scream before, writhing in pain and almost fainting as a result of the pain. It was amazing: as soon as his joint was popped back in he was pretty much back to normal, and following the drama he had no bruising, no swelling and no additional pain. He was back out in the snow within minutes jumping around like nothing ever happened. If you’re a parent and you’re reading this check out YouTube for clips of Nursemaid’s Elbow because I know quite a few other young kids who have had the same thing happen to them.
On Christmas Eve the kids made Christmas cookies with Cheryl and Lisa, tackling the dough after breakfast so it had time to set in the fridge while we were on the slopes. We skied Brighton on our second day, a fantastic resort for the kids with equally good terrain for the adults. Operations were a bit of a zoo – the parking lot was a mess and it took us half an hour to get Cheryl a lift ticket – and the fact that it’s at the end of the road in Big Cottonwood Canyon means that traffic often gets backed up for a couple of miles as it works its way into the resort. But that didn’t stop us from having a ripper day, kids (Max especially) loved all the tree skiing.
We ventured into downtown Salt Lake City on Christmas Eve to see the lights at Temple Square. The temple itself – the global center of the Mormon church – is an amazing structure, like a castle out of Lord of the Rings. The whole square around the temple was lit up with an amazingly intricate array of Christmas lights, it really was quite a sight. We didn’t stay for long though, it was bitterly cold and we were all feeling it after skiing hard during the day
Santa Claus did manage to find us in Utah, I wish I’d filmed Max’s reaction on Christmas morning when he stumbled out of his bedroom and saw that Santa had not only eaten his plate of cookies but had dropped off an adult-sized “real toolbox” (Max’s words) for him. Pure joy. We all enjoyed a breakfast of Di’s bagels – Christmas isn’t Christmas without Di’s bagels – before hitting Solitude to ski.
After a traditional Christmas dinner of ham, mashed potatoes and salad as well as (a few too many) Christmas libations we were greeted with a solid dumping of fresh, dry, Wasatch powder on the day after Christmas. After an exquisite breakfast of homemade quiche from Cheryl we hit Solitude again, another of the kids’ favorites with all the cruisey blue runs and fun trees to explore.
Back to Brighton one last time on December 27, Brighton was definitely Max’s favorite as there are a couple of runs that can be skied top to bottom entirely in the trees. The kids both really excelled with five days straight on the slopes, Max just feels those skis on his feet, he’s pretty much past the point of me needing to suggest ways to improve. It was bitterly cold for the whole team’s last day on the slopes, after the first run I jetted back down to the base to buy some hand warming packets for the kids and a new set of gloves for Max (he needed them anyway…). The maximum temperature on the mountain that day was 14F/-10C! Chris was kind enough to build some snowmen with the kids at the end of the day so Cheryl, Lisa and I could have a couple of adult runs in the fresh snow. Such a fun day!
The kids didn’t have another day in them, so I was lucky to get a solo day to explore Alta on our last day in Salt Lake (thanks Lisa!). Alta’s an amazing resort, one that should be on every serious skier’s bucket list. A huge resort by acreage, but the variety of terrain is amazing: everything from steep chutes, tree skiing, runs full of natural features like boulders and creeks, as well as some of the widest (and fastest) top-to-bottom groomers I’ve ever skied. Alta’s slogan is “Best Skiing in Utah” and I have a feeling that it could be true. Even though it’s only a stone’s throw from Snowbird – I actually skied a couple of runs at Snowbird from the back side of Alta – Alta’s location deeper in Little Cottonwood Canyon means that it gets more snow than its neighbor, stays colder and the snow it does receive seems to be a little drier. Whoever coined the term “blower pow” must have been skiing Alta on a powder day, when I was there I could look behind me and see plumes of fluffy white stuff in my wake. Fun stuff! It was clear but again bitterly cold for my day at Alta, maximum temperature was 13F/-11C, I actually got a headache on one run from the cold air entering my helmet via the two minuscule gaps between the top of my goggles and my helmet!
An awesome week on the slopes and great to have Cheryl and Chris join us, we don’t get to see them very often. And so lucky with such good snow!
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Magical moments on the mountains !!