Solitude

Big Cottonwood Canyon | March 2022

In late March I joined a friend of mine for a few days of skiing at Brighton and Solitude in Utah. I have always loved skiing in Utah. We use to take the kids to Park City several years ago when they were much younger. My friend and his son were on Spring Break and I invited myself to crash their two bedroom condo at Solitude.

The first day of skiing was at Brighton and was decent at best. The snow was pretty crusty since it hadn’t snowed in a couple weeks. That evening it snowed and we walked outside our room and over to the base on Solitude. We took a couple lifts to get as high up as possible however the run we wanted was closed…and had been closed for the past 3 weeks. We were told to check back and after a couple of runs the lift opened up and we went up Summit Express and carved up Dynamite. The snow was awesome and we rode as hard as we could. We had that feeling that you get when your skiing fresh powder…you know like you felt on a snow day when you were a kid. We rode as long as we could and eventually had to go down the hill and ride something a bit more tame. After a handful of those we packed in for the day. The next day I decided to pack it in early. My knee needed a break and my snowboard boot was blown out.

The trip was short but sweet. I wish I could have stay longer but I got to experience two mountains in two days which is more that I’ve skied out west in many years. The takeaway is I need to go back and ski more of Utah. In addition, I was inspired to ski in Flagstaff since its only a few hours away. Until then I’ll be looking forward to more riding in new places in 2023.