Snowboarding Fun in Park City, Utah
Winter is here and the cold and snow have started taking over. What better way to have some fun than to go snowboarding. Some of my friends and I went snowboarding for the first time last year. We had so much fun that we decided to try and make sure to go twice a year. So for our first trip of this season we decided to try out the mountains in Park City, Utah.
We snowboarded for four days. For the first two days we went snowboarding at Park City Mountain. The weather was beautiful and the slopes had some fresh powder. They also had some very simple beginner slopes that were easy to navigate and were great to practice on. Also some of the slopes were open for night skiing/riding. This gave us more time to really have some fun.
For the third and fourth day, we were going to try out The Canyons, but after our first day there it seemed like most of the group wanted to go back to Park City Mountain. I thought The Canyons was pretty good, but it seemed a lot more technical than the slopes at Park City. Also when we went to The Canyons it was raining and sleeting for most of the day. So by the end of the day we were soaked. All the lifts closed at 4 pm and it seemed like for the most part our group was already done for the day.
Since our group was mainly beginners we finished out our last day at Park City. We figured we could go all out and really wear ourselves out by staying the whole day till 9pm. The day started out ok, but there were some high winds. For this reason they only had a few lifts going. As the day went on though the wind died down a little and most if not all the lifts started going. Eventually a storm front moved in and caused more high winds and small hail, which I called snow pellets. This didn’t detour us much though and we kept going down the slopes.
My buddy, Jesse, and I did take a break to go souvenir shopping and to get a few drinks. At night the conditions seemed to be getting worse and they closed some of the lifts again. We grouped back together and sat around for a bit, but before we left we wanted to see about making one more run. Luckily they had reopened the lift for the slope we wanted to go down.
Having had two Malibu and Cokes and a shot of Jager, I was ready to go night riding down a blue. This was really funny because I was also a little tired from snowboarding all day and then taking a break. I had gone down this particular slope one other time, but I really didn’t remember it much. My friends were nice enough to remind me of a flat track part near the top that would suck you down a black if you didn’t get enough speed going. Luckily I made it past that part without too much difficulty but it really wore out my feet staying up on my toe edge.
After a little rest we started down the steeper part of the slope and I felt really good. I was doing my S turns and feeling confident. Then I felt and heard the board hitting ice patches. This was no fun for me. I was not confident enough to just head straight through it. So I again stayed on my toes and just slowly worked my way down. As we got further down the slope got better, but the snow pellets were picking up. Then we were getting hit with really strong gusts of them. This made for some interesting riding. With more time doing my S turns, I noticed my right leg was getting lazy. Not sure if it was from the slope, the snow pellets, the alcohol, or the fatigue, but I did take a couple spills and provide my friends with some entertainment.
Needless to say I made it down the mountain in one piece and then we were off to dinner for the night. After dinner, Jesse and I decided we wanted to at least hit the town for one night. We had asked the bartender on the slopes how late everything was open and he said, “You have to be out by 2”. We took this to mean that it was like Dallas and last call would be around 1:45. So after dinner we got back to our condo, changed and headed out to do a little bar hopping. We started off at the No Name Saloon. It was an interesting local bar with an old Harley hanging from the ceiling. Jesse and I chilled a little and then a little before 1am we decided to try the bar next door. Right as we were about to head out, the “ugly lights” came on. We were a little confused. We learned that last call for drinks is at 1am and apparently they give you an hour to finish your drink and sober up. It really sucked. Had we known this, we may have hammered a few more back to really enjoy the night.
So we started heading back to the condo. As we did, we both were very hungry so we made a stop by the 7-Eleven right by where we were staying. We decided that we would get some hot dogs and chips. We went over to the hot dog station and even though they didn’t look good we got the last two that were there. The store clerk seemed very annoyed with us like we were interrupting something. I joked that he was jacking off to porn and wanted us to leave before he lost his boner. LOL Anyways the hot dog tasted as bad as it looked. It was awful. Eventually we made it back to the condo and retired for the night knowing that we would be headed back to Dallas the next morning. It always seems vacations never last long enough.
I made photo galleries from the pics we took on the trip and I will also put links on the gallery page to some video footage once I get it edited.
*UPDATE* Uploaded a video of Jesse’s first time snowboarding to my YouTube Channel.
