Finally, some snow

After weeks of nothing but flurries, we finally got a good storm last night. As of 6:00 this morning, Deer Valley had reported 11" and Park City reported 7". Between then an noon, it snowed another good 5", giving us roughly a foot.



The snow was a bit heavy. A foot of heavy snow can be tough to ski in if you aren't careful. The wetter snow will do a better job of fixing our base than a foot of dry fluffy Utah powder.



Even though it is right after the Martin Luther King holiday, the resort was fairly empty. This is Powder Keg, one of my favorite runs. I had it completely to myself.



I think everyone was happy with the new snow except some maintenance guy over at PCMR. Apparently the snow melt system for the plaza wasn't working, so they ended up with piles of snow, ice and slush where everyone was walking. Oops.



Now the sun has come out. Tonight they can groom all this in to make a more respectable base. They we are supposed to get a good amount of snow Thursday through Saturday.

Perhaps some snow?

This has been a terrible snow year. Ignoring the little one inch dustings, we have only had five snow storms this winter. Thank God one of them was big.

January is supposed to be the snowiest month here. That doesn't help much when they say this is the driest January in the past 67 years. The slopes definitely need more to ski on and our snowpack is at less than 50% or normal. That has serious repercussions for this summer's water supply.

If we are lucky, this week will get us back on track, at least a little. There is a series of storms that look like they have pushed off our high pressure system and we should get some snow. Hopefully we will get a LOT of snow, but that doesn't seem likely. Every finger in Park City is crossed.

Friends of Animals at Brown's Canyon

Julie and I spent a chunk of both yesterday and today doing work out at Brown's Canyon. This is the new rescue and rehab facility being built by Friends of Animals Utah. We were figuring out where all the low voltage wiring should go (phone, data, TC, cameras, security, ...). Today we actually di about a third of the wiring.



The building is starting to take shape inside. It's quite the facility.



While happy semi-skilled volunteers like Julie and I can do a lot of low voltage wiring, the real construction is being done by "the talent".



Cathy, who runs the retail adoption center (Furburbia), was up the ladder. Her three dogs were very worried about being separated.



We made a lot of progress today but have two or three similar efforts to get all the cable run.

Pictures I wish I caught

When I was driving home from Bryce Canyon, I saw lots of interesting photo opportunities. However, I haven't mastered slamming the brakes without a wreck, sliding the car to face the right direction, powering down the window and grabbing a quick shot. Here were a few interesting things I saw as I drove:

• I saw a parade of cows. It appears they were at the top of the field when the leader cow decided to meander to the bottom. Two or three followed him closely. Another 10 were 50 feet behind. Every other cow in the field was saying "oops, were moving", and beginning to file in. It looked extremely coordinated.
  
• Two horses napping in a field. There was apparently a big compost pile. Compost gives off heat as it "cooks", so it was the only place with no snow. The horses were laying down, sprawled on the side of the little hill, grabbing some rays.
• I drove down the a winding road in the middle of nowhere. Every half mile there was another Cattle Crossing sign. Finally, as I got to the turnoff for I-15, I saw one lone cow in the middle of a huge field. This one guy seemed to merit quite a bit of signage.
• As I turned off I-15 in Provo, I saw about 100 wild turkeys on the hillside. I almost slammed on the brakes, but decided that it wasn't worth a car up the butt.

I just need a fast camera and a chauffeur.

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Well, the skiing in Park City stinks right now, so I took off for another photography trip into the parks of Utah. I went down to Bryce Canyon (a bit over 4 hours driving) on Monday and came back Tuesday afternoon.

I spent the first part of Monday heading through the park to figure out where everything was, and where the best shots might come from. But I was really drawn to an area called Red Canyon.



These shots aren't from some big national park, they are from the highway I took to get to my hotel. Where else in the world can you find eye candy like this as you drive down the road?



Highway 12 is designated as a scenic highway, and it is!



Notice the sign in the bottom right: "Scenic Turn-out 1/4 mile". Every time you got to a turn-out, there was another sign. I guess they decided that mixing lots of gawking tourists, slowing down or stopping in the road, didn't mix well with some of the big trucks that speed along the winding curves. There were turnouts and parking everywhere.



You hear stories about GPS's leading people off into stupid places. I stopped at the Ranger's station and asked about where to get good pictures. I got some decent advice, but when I asked about finding wildlife, he suggested I go travel this "back road". Dopey me. I was expecting a road. When I finally found it, I discovered it was 12 miles of ATV goat path. My GPS was smart enough not to even acknowledge its existence.



As for getting pictures in Bryce Canyon, Utah just continues to surprise me. I am driving through the park. It looks like southern North Carolina, with some surprise snow on the ground. Mostly flat. Long leaf pines. Where's all the rock structures?



Then you get to to the overlook and find this. Damn!



The hoodoos look very different from anything I saw in Zion or Arches. How can the rock and erosion in such a small area of the US, look so incredibly different?



There was one arch, but that was about it.



I liked how clearly you could see the different types of stone on this lonesome tower. Notice the tough little pine trees trying to grow on top of the tower.



The park has had a number of controlled burns and accidental forest fires. It gives some sections an almost ghostly appearance.



If you have followed my blog, you may have noticed how much I love the look of the gnarled tree stumps. Bryce was full of them.



Very pretty in the evening light.



But the star of Bryce is the hoodoos. There are miles of them.



They are intricate and seem fragile, but are huge and will probably be here for many thousands of years.





So after shooting from several of the overlooks, I decided to hike down into the canyon. Unfortunately, this was not a common idea. OK, it was just me. That meant heading down a steep "trail" in snow that ranged from my knees to my thighs. Hiking back out took me two hours of hard work, and I think I am in decent shape. No wonder it was just me.



Something I couldn't really see from up top were the rolling hills in the valley. As best I could tell, they were hills of eroded waste from the hoodoos.



From the bottom of the canyon, you could see more differences in the make-up of the towers.



But I think my favorite two pictures were funky trees I ran across. This pine looks like it has lead a very difficult life.



And this one was even more interesting. Those are pine cones at the end of the branches.



The snow was melting in interesting, flaky looking patterns. Very fragile.



Phallic?



And just a few more to finish up.







Bryce is drop dead gorgeous in the winter. The park is almost empty and you can get cheap accommodations. Bring snowshoes, poles and ski pants.

Next stop Canyonlands? Goblin Valley? Monument Valley? What an awesome collection of parks!

Go ski racer

Since it just doesn't seem to want to snow out here, I don't really want to do much skiing. Instead, Julie, Jasper and I went snowshoeing in the morning and then I went over to Park City to watch some ski racing.

This is a Mountain Regional race. Most of the competitors are young men and women from high schools and colleges around Colorado, Utah, Nevada and the mountain west. Some are on the Olympic Development team, but these aren't the super stud skiers. They are all over in Europe racing right now (Go Lindsey Vonn!)



The event lasts for four days, but all of these pictures are from day 2 of the woman's race.



The thing that impressed me was how much the ladies got their skis up on edge and their bodies down low. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to hold an edge like that. Notice how close her butt is to the snow, but that her upper body is still almost straight up.



The day was beautiful and the sky was a gorgeous blue. We contrast that with the smoggy, hazy, nasty red alert days they are having down in Salt Lake City.



Some competitors were grimacing with the effort, while others seemed to be having a great time.





The most painful thing to me is the way they smack the gates as they go by. The ones that have the fastest times aren't just touching the gates. They smack every one hard! Look at how far over the right flag support is bent.



And sometimes bad things happen, at speed.



She just held on and kept her skis out of the way. She was dazed and hurt, but skied down by herself.



Right next to the race course is the half pipe and one of Park City's terrain parks. The kids in the half pipe weren't doing exciting things, but the ones going off the jumps were getting some big air.



Some were on skis and some were on snowboards. I liked watching when the skiers actually approached the jump skiing backwards and then took off from there.



This was one of my favorite pictures from the day. While everyone else was doing big tricks, this guy just went floating by. It was hard to notice that he wasn't just skiing on the ground. No movement. No leaning. No prepping for a big landing.



The snowboarders have a bit of an advantage because the landing can be more varied, and yet still be successful. When the skiers did twisting flips, I was sure I was going to be shooting pictures of AirMed helicopters.





And we end with one of the more colorful ones. So many things to photograph here. On Monday I am heading down to shoot the Hoodoos at Bryce Canyon.

Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Being a gadget-aholic, I really need to go to this mega-huge event some year. Vegas is only a 6 hour drive from here. I watch a lot of the interesting stuff at Engadget but so much of it is repetition (another new phone, laptop, TV, ...)

The two little items that caught my interest were:

• SD cards (the little card that goes in lots of cameras) are now up as high as 64G. This means you can cram about 5,000 photos on one little card. There are announcements saying that 1TB SD cards will be shipping at the end of the year. Think about that. These little cards are much smaller than a credit card, yet will hold way more than most laptop hard drives.
  
• Skinny new TVs are getting skinnier. The screens on the new high-end Samsung LED TVs are about 1/4" thick. At the same time they get so skinny, they actually attach directly to the Internet and can watch streamed movies direct from Netflix (no extra box involved). Soon you really will just hang them on the wall in a picture frame.