ah, my friends, I have found the promised land. or perhaps it found me! overnight 1-2.5 ft of fresh soft dry powder, depending on location on the mountain. Yes, even I, the non-powder skier could ski it ... a bit. Somehow, and I'd like to credit Roger Z, John *, Crush and all other DCski Message Forums posters for this, I picked up something of new found ability to make may way down through the semi-steep and the not quite deep using just my skis! Ah, bliss...
By 2pm the powder was somewhat tracked out and it was noticably more challening to ski in. My favorite lift was Peruvian which is right behind the main lodge. It's just got a nice little bunch of black and a few blues to cut your teeth on powder wise. BUT there's VASTLY better really higher up on the mountain, steeper by far in many places and perhaps more wide open with more powder. As today was day 1, we stayed on all the lower slope lifts, skipping the Tram to the top and Mineral Basin which was closed part of the day. The snow continues although here in Sandy/Midvale it has stopped and the sun actually shown for a few minutes. that was nice too.
The bus up this morning was delayed by heavy snow on the little cottonwood canyon road, or perhaps it was avalanche threat. but no matter, we weren't the only ones that had to inch our way up the mountain and a car would not have made that better. On the way back this evening we did have to wait a solid 30 min for a bus, again the road was closed for an hour or so while fireworks were lit off to knock some snow off. But that turned into a chance to talk to the locals and fellows skiers about the day, and where to go tomorrow. Good stuff.
Alta seemed to be the consensus ... although I could tell many were partial to snowbird and just thought, why not go back there again? Well, we'll get to it, don't you worry.

thats the thing with snowbird it gets tracked fast. what you have to do is listen to the locals and you will find out when things are opening. like mineral basin being closed you will find out like an hour before it opens if you just stand in the tram line and listen to the people talk. its the best thing in the world. you get up there a few minutes before they drop the rope and you are guarnteed fresh tracks. the thing with snowbird is the locals track out all the easy stuff that every1 hits up first then they work their way around the mtn tracking out different stuff as it opens. if you liked peruvian you need to get to the top and take chips run all the way to the bottom. you will really like that. the basin is sick you need to get back there if you are decent at skiing or boarding and know how to ride powder. if you arent experienced in the powder you might wanna stay outta the basin. it has quite a few run out and if you hit those you are pretty screwed. i can tell you that if you ride pretty close to under the lift line you wont hit any runs outs. the farther to the right you go the more of a run out it is going to be unless you stay super high and carry lots of speed through the flat bottom. i took my brother back into basin and it was his first time in really super deep powder and it was a mistake. he got super stuck in a flat spot and had to crawl out of it. thats when the snow in the basin was reaching the 70+ inch mark of nothing but freshness. ive got a pic of him stuck back there and he was in basically up to his chest with his board still stapped on.
enough of the rambeling the basin is the sickest part of snowbird other than the cirque. great scott is pretty good as well.