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Budapest in the snow
28 January 2025 04:35 pmThis area is significant in the city's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with its numerous historically significant buildings and cultural importance to the Hungarian national identity. We would return a couple of days later to spend some more time here before we left the city.
Deer Valley, Utah
10 January 2025 05:25 pm After skiing three full days at Park City, and being slightly frustrated by how little of the mountain was open, we decided to spend a day over at the neighboring Deer Valley Ski Resort. We spent a week skiing here last year, and were familiar with the mountain, and knew we would be able to enjoy a day over there. We started our day a little earlier, as we needed to catch a bus from the Park City Mountain over to Deer Valley, but we were able to get there by the time the lifts opened. It was a chilly day, and the visibility was a little limited for the first hour, especially at the top of the mountain. But the sun soon burned off the cloud cover, and it became a beautiful blue sky day. Deer Valley had only gotten a couple of inches of snow over the weekend, so the runs here were icier, with the groomed runs largely scraped off by mid-day and the moguls solid and icy. So, while our morning runs were fast and fun, it became more difficult and less fun as the afternoon progressed. We might have done a few more runs, but the last couple were decidedly not fun, and so we ended up leaving earlier than we otherwise might have.
Our day at Deer Valley was a nice break from Park City, giving us a different selection of terrain to ski. With the limited amount of open terrain at Park City, it is unclear that we would have enjoyed an additional day there anyway, and this gave us a chance to change things up in the middle of our week.
Our day at Deer Valley was a nice break from Park City, giving us a different selection of terrain to ski. With the limited amount of open terrain at Park City, it is unclear that we would have enjoyed an additional day there anyway, and this gave us a chance to change things up in the middle of our week.
Park City, Utah
10 January 2025 04:22 pm When we left Virginia on January 3, I knew that the Park City Ski Resort hadn't had a lot of snow yet this season, and that large amounts of the resort were not open yet. What we didn't know until we arrived in Salt Lake City was that the ski patrol at Park City Resort was on strike. We were hearing horror stories about hour-plus lift lines and long delays waiting for ski patrol assistance. Our first day of skiing was on Saturday, so we were prepared for the resort to be crowded with holiday skiers. And that proved to be the case. However, by using the singles lines we were still able to get some good runs in. But we did make the mistake of dropping down to the bottom of a lift where the only way out was back up the lift. The line for that lift stretched up the runs leading to lift, and it took us forty-five minutes to get out again. But beyond that, we found that while there were lift lines, they weren't unbearably long.
It snowed most of the day on Saturday, making the skiing conditions excellent. This fresh snow would make for good skiing for the rest of the week, even though we didn't get much more new snow after Sunday morning. I'm not sure why, but the resort wasn't grooming very many runs on the mountain, and I was surprised to find moguls on most of the blue (intermediate) runs. Mogul skiing isn't my strength, and I often struggle in them, especially if the terrain is steep or the moguls are icy. Because of the fresh snow, most of the moguls were surprisingly soft, and because these were on intermediate runs, they really weren't very steep, and I found myself actually enjoying skiing them.
The Park City Resort is almost two separate ski areas in one. The Park City Mountain area has a base area right in the town of Park City, while the Canyons area has a base area several miles north of town. The two areas are joined by a gondola lift, but with amount of terrain that was closed, it actually took us two additional chair lift rides to traverse over to the open terrain in the Canyons the only day we skied over there. The runs in the Canyons area seemed to be better groomed, and we got some great, fast runs in over there. But the open terrain was extremely limited, and the amount of time it took to traverse back and forth between the two areas ended up discouraging us from going back over again.
In the end, we skied a total of four days at Park City Mountain portion of the resort, and covered almost all of the open terrain on that portion. Luckily, there were enough runs open there that we could fill an entire day without getting bored skiing the same runs over and over. We would have liked to have had the opportunity to ski more of the resort, but that will have to wait for a return visit.
The ski patrol and management reached a contract agreement while we were there, ending the strike, and on our final day, the ski patrol was noticeably present on the mountain. They were actively working to prepare more of the mountain to open, probably for the weekend, and they also seemed to be focused on doing some PR work, with patrollers stationed near the top of many of the lifts to interact with the skiers and snowboarders. It was good to see them back at work, and I only hope that the terms of their new contract were favorable for them. They have a hard and often thankless job keeping the mountain safe, and I appreciate all the hard work they do.
It snowed most of the day on Saturday, making the skiing conditions excellent. This fresh snow would make for good skiing for the rest of the week, even though we didn't get much more new snow after Sunday morning. I'm not sure why, but the resort wasn't grooming very many runs on the mountain, and I was surprised to find moguls on most of the blue (intermediate) runs. Mogul skiing isn't my strength, and I often struggle in them, especially if the terrain is steep or the moguls are icy. Because of the fresh snow, most of the moguls were surprisingly soft, and because these were on intermediate runs, they really weren't very steep, and I found myself actually enjoying skiing them.
The Park City Resort is almost two separate ski areas in one. The Park City Mountain area has a base area right in the town of Park City, while the Canyons area has a base area several miles north of town. The two areas are joined by a gondola lift, but with amount of terrain that was closed, it actually took us two additional chair lift rides to traverse over to the open terrain in the Canyons the only day we skied over there. The runs in the Canyons area seemed to be better groomed, and we got some great, fast runs in over there. But the open terrain was extremely limited, and the amount of time it took to traverse back and forth between the two areas ended up discouraging us from going back over again.
In the end, we skied a total of four days at Park City Mountain portion of the resort, and covered almost all of the open terrain on that portion. Luckily, there were enough runs open there that we could fill an entire day without getting bored skiing the same runs over and over. We would have liked to have had the opportunity to ski more of the resort, but that will have to wait for a return visit.
The ski patrol and management reached a contract agreement while we were there, ending the strike, and on our final day, the ski patrol was noticeably present on the mountain. They were actively working to prepare more of the mountain to open, probably for the weekend, and they also seemed to be focused on doing some PR work, with patrollers stationed near the top of many of the lifts to interact with the skiers and snowboarders. It was good to see them back at work, and I only hope that the terms of their new contract were favorable for them. They have a hard and often thankless job keeping the mountain safe, and I appreciate all the hard work they do.
