2010-11 Ski Season Winding Down Slo-o-o-wly
A handful of ski areas are still running their lifts Most North American ski areas have rung down the curtain on the 2010-11 ski season — one of the best on record on many parts of the continent. In the US, a handful of areas are still operating, at least on weekends. Buy a season [...]
New Airport for St. George
Fast-growing city in southwest Utah & gateway to Zion National Park gets enhanced air service St. George (named for Mormon apostle George A. Smith, not the third-century martyred dragon-slaying saint) originally was a small Mormon cotton “mission” and site ofUtah’s first Mormon temple, built in 1877. Salt Lake City’s temple was opened in 1893 on …drum roll … St. George Street. The community [...]
Look! Up in the Sky. It’s a Canopy of Stars!
Summer stargazing in Utah national parks The clear, dry desert air makes for great astronomical opportunities. Below are three programs you can take part in with National Park Service rangers and volunteers to help you identify and understand what you are seeing through the telescope. Cedar Breaks National Monument. With some of the nation’s darkest night skies, [...]
New National Monument Designations on the Horizon — Maybe
Western towns will benefit if sites are federally protected An internal memo about more than a dozen natural areas considered for possible National Monument designation has surfaced. The areas that the Department of Interior is studying for management and protection by the National Park Service or other federal agency reported are: San Rafael Swell, UT Montana’s Northern [...]
Skiing Utah: Powder Mountain
“Less is more” at this ski area near Ogden (and that’s not me blasting through the powder) Powder Mountain offers more terrain and more snow with less infrastructure than any other area in Utah. It is a ski and snowboard area, pure and simple, and not a resort with lodging. There’s 4,700 acres of inbounds [...]
Skiing Utah: Sundance
Sundance: Robert Redford’s ski mountain – slopes amid a super-environmentally aware resort Why would a Coloradan ski anyplace else?, friends ask when I go out of state (or out of the country) to make some turns. First (and really foremost), I travel so that I can write about ski resorts beyond the Centennial State’s rectangle. But [...]
Arches National Park’s Wall Arch Collapses
Park’s 12th largest arch collapsed in the middle of the night with no witnesses and no injuries On August 3, Wall Arch was one of the more prominent and accessible sandstone arches in Utah’s Arches National Park. At 71 feet high and and 33 1/2 feet wide, it was the 12th largest of the 2,000-plus [...]
Color-Coded Airport Security Lines Tested
Salt Lake City and Denver are test sites for new system to speed up lines. Skiers and snowboarders are familiar with symbols signifying relative slope difficulty: green circle for easiest (aka, beginner) runs, blue square for more difficult (aka, intermediate) and black diamond for most difficult (aka, expert). The Transportation Security Agency is now testing [...]
Abundant Snow Heralds Real Start of the Ski Season
I’m at Beaver Creek, CO, right now. It was snowing when I drove up on Thursday, and it has been snowing steadily ever since. Beaver Creek reported 8 inches of new snow in the last 24 hours, 16 inches in the last 48. In Colorado, the least 24-hour snow accumulation was 5 inches at several [...]
Sketchy Start to the North American Ski Season
For skiers and snowboarders, the ideal winter would be one with cold weather for snowmaking through all of November, with real snow starting to fall on top of that just before Thanksgiving and enough natural snow all season long for wonderful spring conditions — in New England and elsewhere in the Northeast and Quebec, the [...]
