Travel Ski With The Hogs 2001 Ski Report

Black Diamonds

We decided to spend the day skiing at Deer Valley again. The price for a lift ticket is only $2 or $3 dollars more than Park City, and in case you’ve missed it, we think the groomed hills at Deer Valley hills are really easy to ski. Once again we were up early and on the hill for first tracks through the corduroy.

One thing we appreciated on this trip was the short ride to the hill. We usually stay in Salt Lake City because it’s less than an hours’ drive to most of the ski hills in the area. We decided to stay in Park City to reduce the drive to next to nothing, and it worked. We were among the first ones on the mountain. Probably because of the short ride, we only skied Deer Valley and Park City on this trip.

In a way, that was a loss because of all the other great skiing in the Salt Lake City area. Although many of the ski areas around Salt Lake City can’t really be called “resorts,” because they hardly have any amenities. They do have great skiing, however. They also have bathrooms and cafeterias, and the price is lower, so if you’re bringing the whole family be sure to check out info from our previous trips- you’ll save yourself a bundle.

Deer Valley is the most expensive resort in the area. We’ve never stayed there, but we did check out the prices on some real estate there just for kicks. Let’s just say that million-dollar condos are out of our league and leave it at that. We didn’t check out any rental prices after seeing the purchase prices. However, if you stay somewhere else and drive there, there are some amenities that you get with the price of a lift ticket that really impress us.

To start with, they have valets who help you unload the skis from your car at a drop-off area. This wasn’t a necessity for us, but some of the families we saw were really helped by this service. It also kept traffic in the drop-off area moving quite smoothly. One day, one of the guys who helped us even refused a tip. From then on, I didn’t offer a tip- so if you ski bum slackers are wondering who’s messing up the tip situation for you, it’s the old guy.

They also have people called “Mountain Hosts.” These folks are most noticeable at the mid-mountain junction of several chairlifts. They greet people who look lost or undecided on where they want to go, ask them what kind of skiing they want to do, and make suggestions to get them on their way. This does two things: it makes you feel like you got something extra for your lift ticket, and it keeps traffic moving on the hill.

Anyway, we had settled into our routine by this time: drop off the skis; Caveman parks the car; Jester and I bring the Caveman’s and our skis to the racks near the start of the chairlift; Caveman walks back from parking the mini-van; the three of us take a run while Schpoo fumbles with his brace and Dallas Dave takes a dump. We’re not powder hounds, but first tracks in corduroy are pretty nice, too.

We really skied the hell out of that mountain this day. Starting out, we took an extra run instead of waiting for Schpoo and Dallas Dave. (Maybe we should change his name to “Dumpin’ Dave.”) Once we collected everybody, we headed up the Sterling chairlift and down Nabob, Birdseye, and other runs towards the left side of the mountain.

After that, we skied over to the right side of the mountain, taking runs like Hawkeye, Blue Bell, and Lucky Star. Both Dallas Dave and Caveman told me that Blue Bell is a dairy down in Texas, BTW. Jester showed us his “technique” as we stopped for a picture going down Sidewinder.

We wanted to make our way back over to the left side of the mountain, but by this time the lunch crowds had thinned out, so we stopped for lunch (more hi-octane chili) at the Silver Lake Lodge. I stayed away from having a beer at lunch because I was skiing terrific (remember the corduroy) and I didn’t want anything to interfere with it.

After lunch, we took a couple of blues to get over to the left side of the mountain and skied there for a while. Then came the inevitable call on a great ski day: “Let’s take a black!”

We decided to take Stein’s Way. This is a black diamond that turns into a blue. Dallas Dave and I were the two worst skiers in tour group. I was having a pretty good day, so I followed without hesitation. Dallas Dave came along too.

If you are a blue skier and you want to take a black at Deer Valley, Stein’s Way is the one to take. It’s probably the shortest black diamond on the mountain, and it was well-groomed, so there was no problem getting down. The interesting thing is where you end up.

Stein’s Way takes you down to the Mayflower chairlift, which serves only black diamonds and double blues. My original thinking was that if I got wiped out on Stein’s Way, I could always wimp out and take an alternate way down if the rest of the hogs decided to continue to challenge themselves on blacks or double blues.

Unfortunately, I didn’t look at the map. Dallas Dave made his way down a double blue and went on his own to recover. I should have gone with him. Instead, I took a couple of double blues with the remaining hogs. I finally realized that I was going to kill myself, so I moved off the double blues and towards the blues, and even towards the greens. There’s a green run on the right side of the mountain that I remembered from a previous trip, and I wanted to go back there.

The run is called Lucky Jack. It’s probably my favorite ski run in the world, even though it is a short green. The reason I like it so much is because you ski through the trees, but there’s enough room so that you’d have to be a truly terrible skier to do a Sonny Bono into a tree. The run has always been empty when I’ve skied there, which is kind of nice when you’re skiing through the trees.

For the remainder of the afternoon, I stayed on runs that had nice scenery: Hidden Treasure and Stargazer are a couple of blues that you can take a couple of times and see something different each time. As the mountain was closing down, I skied down to our meeting place and met the boys for a beer.

PART ONE: THE JOURNEY BEGINS