I’ve been going out to Salt Lake City pretty consistently for the past 5 years, at least once a season, to indulge in what could arguably be the best snow in the world. Over that time I’ve learned a couple things that are worth sharing.

1. It’s cheap to fly there.  Real cheap.  Typically it’s about $200 round trip from Chicago to SLC depending on who you fly with.  Add in taxes and the cost of shipping your board both ways and it will realistically cost you around $250.  Compare that to $450 to Reno or $600 to Aspen or Vail and there’s just no question.  Check expedia.com and try not to travel on heavy days like Fridays and Mondays and you should find some great deals.
2. They have the largest variety of resorts within less than 1 hour of the airport.  Sure Reno has Mt. Rose and Aspen has the Highlands, Snowmass and Buttermilk, but SLC has an incredible variety of resorts like The Canyons, Park City, Brighton, Solitude, Alta, Snowbird and more all within 30-45 minutes of the airport.
3. Buy discount tickets.  Utah Ski & Golf has a great selection of discounted tickets for sale right downtown SLC.  You can ride most resorts all day, any day for just over $50.  In some cases that can save you up to $40 in a single day.
4. The Park City area is nice because it has plenty of infrastructure to house and distract you while not on the mountain, but Park City gets the least amount of snow of all the resorts.  Check SkiUtah.com for an honest daily listing of snow reports.  Just this past Sunday the Canyons got 1″ of new snow, whileThe Wasatch Mountains get crazy dumped on consistently that last week of March every year.  Last year I was out there for 7 days and they got at least 1 foot of snow 5 of those 7 days and that storm kept up the week after I left.  Now, granted, this is an el nino year and snow has been pretty scarce everywhere, but if I were a gambling man I would still put all in that the last week of March is the perfect time to hit your favorite resort or two in the Wasatch Mountains.
5. For the past few years the Canyons has been running a great deal during that last week of March and first week of April.  $200 gets you lodging, 2 lift tickets and 2 breakfasts every day.  So far I have not seen them advertising this deal for this year though, the closest being the Ski Free & Breakfast, but you only get that deal if you rent one of their suites that start at $350.  Not as good of a deal.  I’m going to keep my eyes open and I’ll shout if I see that deal come up.  It’s kind of a bummer because then you’re stuck riding the Canyons the whole time you are there, but the price and convenience is just real hard to beat.  Plus, if you’re staying at the base of the mountain, no storm, even the one as epic as last season’s that shut down 80 up to Kimball Junction, can keep you off the mountain.

I knew when we saw the married couple of hasidic midgets at the airport that magic was in the air, real and ancient magic, the kind of magic that builds nations, changes lives and alters the course of human history. Those little buggers in their devotional doll clothes had clearly been sent by central casting as harbingers of The Great Plenty, though there was little indication as to what form the Plenty wold come. But, after locking paths with those likable little jewish folk, it was clear that grand mysteries were destined to be revealed.

Naturally, since we were about to leave on a snowboarding trip I had assumed that magic would come in the form of fluffy white pillows of dry western snow, sheared rock faces and fresh mountain air. And it did in spades. But, on this fateful trip into that picturesque crease that splits down the center of the lushly decadent acreage of the fiercely individuated Nevada and the ceremoniously broke and broken California, there would be more.

Our plan was to fly into Reno, grab a half day at Mt. Rose then head into Tahoe for a couple days on Heavenly. But as we talked to people at Mt. Rose it become very apparent that, forced to choose, we’d be fools to skip Kirkwood.

30 minutes from the Reno airport, Mt. Rose offers something rare, the ability to leave Chicago in the morning and still have a half day’s worth of riding waiting for you upon landing. Mt. Rose is home to an impressive collection of pretty dramatic chutes and decent off trail runs that were challenging, though a bit rockier than they betrayed on first glance.

On the east side of Mt. Rose there’s the Winter’s Creek Lodge, as fine as any place you might find at a resort to stick your face into beer and it has an all glass wall providing one of the more staggering views of the Sierras we would get all weekend.

After a few good hours of riding and some carbonated medication we set off for our accommodations.

We picked up what seemed like a deal for our room on Craig’s List; $250 for 3 nights at the Diamond Resort, a time share community that was part day care center and part nursing home. It wasn’t a terrible price at $40 a night per person, but it was advertised as having a kitchenette. Unfortunately, the kitchenette consisted of a sink, a small fridge and a microwave, definitely not equipped for actually making food of any consumable sort and rendering that $40 a night price tag a bit more expensive by forcing us to eat out. Another bummer was that the pool and hot tub weren’t outside, a strange decision in a mountain town. Oh, and the foyer between our room and our neighbors smelled like an old person urine, that fine senior solution of one part stale, salty, manwater to two parts medicine. Ah, yes, and the maid service never so much as peaked in our door. But so what, I didn’t take this trip for the accomodations, though it is worth noting that when we return we won’t be staying at the Diamond Resort in South Lake Tahoe.

But where the Diamond Resort with it’s geriatric situations failed us Heidi came to our rescue. And our rescue, in all it’s Nordic splendor, came stacked three high and smothered in butter and warm maple syrup. That’s right, I’m speaking of bacon filled pancakes, specifically Heidi’s Pancake Houses Bacon Stack. The Bacon Stack is a delicious, classic repeller cake filled with chunks of bacon cooked right inside of Heidi’s delicious batter. Heidi’s also offers a bacon waffle which, in retrospect, I think might be even better than the bacon pancakes, the light crunchiness of the waffle I’m guessing will provide an even more appropriate throne upon which that sweet salty hog can hide before running flavor ambushes on your jaded palette. Every dish at Heidi’s is served lovingly large with a clementine on the side and our waitress, Jane, was about as sweet and attentive as you’d want your waitress to be without being creepy or phony or following us home.

Our first full day of riding at Kirkwood killed. Natural bowls, rolling tubes, soft snow and a warm afternoon sun. It delivered on every level you would want and then some. I was loving this one run that we did several times picking it up off of Solitude, scooting behind a terrain park and then ducking into some tree lines. It was a long tube filled with rollers and little grade changes and drops. It hadn’t been touched much and nobody was around when we were riding it.

Later, we dug around on Deadwood Spur for a while picking out some nice lines inside the trees. Trevor ultimately grew several extra pairs of balls and took the t-line up to the top of Larry’s Lip. I’m just a nice midwestern boy whose synapses aren’t quite as damaged as his so I kept chipping away on Deadwood Spur while he did that.

After 4 good hours of riding we bellied up at the Tower to indulge in some of Lake Tahoe Breweries fine devices. The beer was effective enough, perhaps too much so, as before long I found myself on “The Wall” climbing to just over 9,400′ and what I was assuming with increasing certainty would be my complete undoing.

Whinnying like a small, gelded, lamb the only solace I could find was in the continued promises to punch Trevor in the nuts repeatedly as soon as I could find some level ground on which to properly levy my strength. But before too long he was talking me through it and managed to get my brain to more adequately process the information needed to get myself down the mountain.

Once I decided I was actually going to ride the bloody mountain and not slide down as slowly and perpindicular as possible, it was an incredible release. I stopped staring as far below me as my eyes could theorize terrible events and started focusing in the 20′ in front of me that I could actually react and respond to and hope to manage and maintain a desirable fate. I kept my knees bent and soft and popped my hips around as I essentially jumped down the mountain from point to point. I stayed loose, remained focused and fell into a rhythm the eliminated everything in the world from existence but my brain and the contours of this holy mountain.

I got to the bottom, my lungs dialated, my pupils air tight and my whole body running at a resonant hum. I couldn’t get back up the mountain soon enough.

We did a few more runs, hit the Tower for some more libations and cheesy fries, before ultimately loading up our coffees and heading back down the pass to South Lake Tahoe. We still had a day of riding left, but it was clear my peak had passed.

That night we hit the Lakeside Casino for an $8.50 Prime Rib dinner, got a peanut butter smothered ice cream at the Red Hut and passed out watching the X-Games.

Sunday was a gorgeous bluebird day, but my legs were shot to hell. Early on Trevor hiked up to the highest point on the resort at Thimble Peak and rode down the mountain to random spikes of hoots and hollering.

We split the rest of the day between the taps and the trails lighting out of Kirkwood before the musical illiteracy of the spongey-headed native Californians could truly negatively and permanently effect us.

Seriously, I heard a dub remix of Pink Floyd’s “The Lunatic Is In the Grass” not once, but twice in the same day. I’d rather be raped by a board room full of advertising geeks dressed in paisley priest outfits and farting axe body spray from their bleeding pores than have to sit through another downbeat of that tasteless morass of sonic psuedo-goovism ever again.

I don’t know, maybe I had had too much of that cookie from that kind native and it was making me edgy and cranky, but for the love of all that has self-respect and a functional state economy I needed to get home STAT, take myself a music bath and wash this third rate schwag rock hippie horse shit off me for once and for good, “bro”.

We retreated to the nursing home and slowly, cathartically, and with a kind of religious attention to detail cleaned ourselves and shuffled out the door for the casino. It had been an amazing run, Tahoe had been quite good to us and the midgets had pulled their tiny little magical weight. We bellied up for some Black Jack that paid for our dinner and drinks and brought a slow, grounded, mahogauny sensibleness to our weekend’s pursuits.

Sitting at the Harrah’s about to get dealt my 6th of 9 Black Jacks I would win for the evening when the pit boss summed it up better than I ever could, he said:

“This is fucking Nevada, sir, you can smoke in here if you like. Hell, we’ve got gambling, fishing, all kinds of skiing, prostitution, those amazing lakes out there and our bars are open 24 hours a day, every day, no matter what. Could you possibly need anything else?”

Yes, one other thing. Bacon filled pancakes…