The worst!
By Brad | December 18, 2008
I lived in the Canyon, I wrote The Powder Hound’s Guides, but then I moved away. My closest touch with my favorite pitches at Snowbird now comes from the daily snow report. It’s best that I don’t check it, but I can’t resist. When I do and I see that it’s snowed nearly a foot overnight, and at about 11 degrees to boot, I am for a moment thrilled–and then plunged into deep depression. Not the kind of depression you make when your tip catches a willow branch in Wilbere Bowl, the kind that they treat with drugs and counseling. Making it worse is the fact that here in Santa Cruz we’re experiencing a fall surf season of epic disappointment.
This is the time of year when conditions get really good. Most mornings the wind is light or nonexistent. And usually we get swells from a regular series of storms marching across the North Pacific. Not this year. There have been a few good swells, including one Saturday morning when a west swell hit from just the right direction to put the best of the north coast big wave spots into their zone of maximum potential. Scotts Creek was epic, Mavericks was epic and, when the tide dropped, every reef point on the West Side fired. But this week there has been no surf at all. The whole of Monterrey Bay a sheet of glass, perfect conditions, but literally no rideable surf.
See for yourself. Go here You’ll see that Steamer Lane is dead flat–an extremely rare occurence, believe me.
No swell and no Snowbird. That’s the worst!
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Snowbird is open!
By Brad | November 8, 2008
Snowbird opened today and this year it’s not just a ribbon of snow connecting Regulator Johnson with the bottom of the mountain. The whole thing isn’t open yet, but what is is good and the outlook is even better! Snow Sunday!
My favorite image of the day is the snowcam Check the 24 hour loop and watch as the snow settles and stabilizes. We love a good base!
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About The Powder Hound’s Guide to Snowbird
By Brad | March 12, 2008
The Powder Hound’s Guide to Snowbird is a trail guide that names, rates and provides directions in and out of every one of Snowbird’s important powder runs. There are no restaurant reviews, descriptions of nightlife or any of that. It’s a guidebook for skiers and snowboarders who want to find their way to the best terrain that Snowbird has to offer and who want to know the names Snowbird’s myriad pitches, runs and traverses that they encounter.
The book was designed to help newcomers to Snowbird quickly find terrain that suits their abilities. It also aims to help those familiar with Snowbird’s terrain learn the often obscure–and changing–names for the various runs.
The book is a 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ perfect bound paperback with 144 pages of information. There are 32 black and white panoramic photos of Snowbird’s terrain with captions that point to the runs, traverses, lift lines and avalanche gates. The book describes over 250 runs; the official Snowbird ski map shows just 60.
The book sells for $24.95 although it is available at a promotional price of $19.95 at retail outlets at Snowbird and Alta (and through their on-line stores).
The book was written by Brad Asmus who is also the author of The Powder Hound’s Guide to Skiing Alta. Dusty Sackett, a 30 year member of the Snowbird Ski Patrol, contributed his considerable expertise to The Powder Hound’s Guide to Snowbird.
The Powder Hound’s Guide to Snowbird and The Powder Hounds Guide to Skiing Alta are published by Four Mile Press. Our motto: Stay out of trouble or find it fast!
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It’s a Little Cottonwood Thing
By Brad | March 6, 2008
I’m Brad Asmus, the author of jThe Powder Hound’s Guide to Snowbird and The Powder Hound’s Guide to Skiing Alta.
I fell hard for Little Cottonwood Canyon the first time I saw it. I’ve lived there, working the lodges, and I had the good luck to fashion a career that includes frequent trips to Salt Lake City. Still, I’m no local. If I were, I might have grown tired of the place and lost the sense of fascination, wonder and adventure I get every time I enter the canyon.
The Powder Hound’s Guides to Alta and Snowbird are my testament to what I believe are the two most extraordinary ski areas in the Americas, if not the world. They’re love notes, of course, but they are also works of geography that capture place names that are ephemeral and of little interest to the world outside the community of powder hounds. If you’re part of that community, though, you’ll understand and even sympathize with the obsession that helped bring them into being.
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