
Ski Trips. They were something of a staple in my youth. Sorry if that sounds rather bougie. It is rather bougie. But this was a ways back. Skiing was “cheap” then (as in not so ludicrously expensive). Airlines let you check bags for the price of your ticket. And, it was my Dad’s favorite thing beside the law and tennis (back with the Bourgeois). So, they were frequent family vacations from the time I was little into to my 30s. Good times generally.
I always figured that I would take my own children on ski vacations too. And we did, a bit. But between their stick and ball sports and the shocking increase in the cost of a ski vacation, not as much as I had hoped. I even stopped really going myself for a decade or two.
But my mate Mark is a skier, or more accurately, his wife and daughter are, and they make him go on ski vacations. Mark and I grew up skiing together in Seattle and we even went on a ski mountaineering trip to the Selkirk Mountains with his dad and brother once, which was fun but scared the piss out of me.
Following the passing of Mark's father this year, Mark invited me to join his family on a celebration of life trip to Alta. Alta was Eric Feigl’s favorite mountain way back in the 1950s when they would drive their old station wagon cross-country to get there from Chicago. Alta put up the first chair lift in Utah and only the 5th one in the country. Still independently owned, Alta has studiously avoided becoming too modern (They are one of just three ski resorts left that do not permit snowboarders. This bites if you’re a boarder, but is much appreciated by skiers).

I’ve always wanted to check it out.
So with this small kick in the butt, I made plans to join them in Little Cottonwood Canyon in January.
Alta is not a beginner’s mountain. Over 55% of the terrain is expert level. What skiers love about the mountain is the steep chutes plunging off the jagged ridges of the Wasatch Range. Years ago, a mutual friend of ours who was a novice skier joined her boyfriend on her first ski trip to the west. The ride from the airport to the ski areas is only 45 minutes. So, within just a few minutes of leaving the airport they were entering the canyon. The mountains just seem to rise straight up out of the earth here. Two-thousand-foot cliff walls line the narrow winding highway as it begins to ascend to Alta and Snowbird. Our friend took one look out the window and burst into tears. The mere thought that she would be made to put on skis somewhere up ahead was enough to make her weep. I was pretty sure Lori would have a similar reaction, so she stayed home to look after Sophie.
Alta rises to 11,068 feet above sea level and about 7,000 feet over the easily visible Salt Lake Basin. That’s not Himalayas high, but it will make you a bit short of breath, as I was all week. Or maybe that’s age? Or drinking beer all day? Hard to tell.
I had a great week. My mission was to find Alf’s High Rustler, which was Eric’s favorite run when he wore a younger man’s ski pants. I say find because Alta doesn’t really do trail signs like most resorts. And you have to make a half-mile traverse and then hunt for it amongst a dozen other steep chutes off a cirque that will send your acrophobia into high gear. When you do find it, it’s 1000-foot drop at 45-degree pitch down to the valley floor. Buckle up.

I loved it.

To celebrate my survival, Mark and I hit the Goldminer’s Daughter, another Alta legend (and according to this sign, the sixth biggest purveyor of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the country—Congratulations!). The signature drink at the Daughter is the “Alta Bomb” which is a shot of espresso dropped into your PBR. An excellent way to jump start your apres ski. I had six.
Wired and wobbly, we moved across the parking lot to the Peruvian Hotel, home to the P-Dog bar, where you can drink $3 Montucky Cold Snacks, chat up the locals, and gaze out over the pool and hot tubs. As Mark and I were talking about the inherent weirdness of skiing (what other activity can you think of that has no real point—you don’t keep score—requires so much physical discomfort, and is so absurdly expensive?), a young Salt Lake bro (who is a transplant from somewhere, the kids are moving to this town by the truckloads every day, including Mark's own daughter, whose father is not a goldminer, but I digress) approached us to explain that the carving motion of skiing creates a nirvana state through the stimulation of inner ear receptors and the vestibular apparatus.
Apparently this nirvana state explains the traffic jams, the long lift lines, the freezing chairlifts, the $1400 Ikon pass, and the $1200 per night condominiums.
That vestibular apparatus is a greedy little fucker.

For me, it's mainly looking forward to getting off the mountain that keeps me coming back to the mountain. Back at our condo, things were buzzing. Mark and his wife, Mary, generously open it up to a menagerie of nieces, nephews, friends, boyfriends, friends of boyfriends, circus clowns, and other skiers. I honestly couldn’t keep track of who was who. But after some more beers, a big dinner was served while the day’s exploits were recounted, rehashed, lied about, and exaggerated before retiring and gearing up to do it all over again.
I’m not sure that I really believe in the great big ski hill in the sky, but I like to think Eric Feigl (and my own father) would be quite pleased to see us carrying on, against all logic, with this crazy tradition.

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