UW Cherry Blossoms

The beautiful campus of the University of Washington is a nice destination for a walk from our house, especially on a warm, sunny spring evening. This photo set is from us visiting campus to admire the cherry blossoms and get Oliver some exercise.

Home

This picture appeared in the Seattle Times. We live in one the colorful townhouses; the Olympic Mountains are in the background.

The real picture is here.

Utah

After my deep powder day at Snowbird, Anya joined me in Utah for the weekend. We spent one day skiing at Snowbasin, a posh, beautiful, and underutilized resort about an hour's drive from Salt Lake City. I'd go back to Snowbasin again if I was in Utah; the skiing was good and there were no lift lines even on a Saturday.

We stayed in Park City, an Old West mining town turned ski destination. The cute architecture and pedestrian-friendliness made Park City by far the most inviting urban environment I saw during my stay in Utah.

We skied another day at a resort near Park City called The Canyons. Although we were able to find some nice runs, the Canyons has a weird layout. The way the lifts are placed necessitates lots of long, flat runouts after skiing the good stuff. Utah has so many skiing options that I'd probably try one of them before going back to The Canyons.

After only a few days (during a mediocre snow year, no less) and having seen only 3 out of 10 resorts in the Salt Lake area, I'm not really qualified to pass judgment on skiing in Utah. My superdeep day at Snowbird was great but was an anomaly - you can't count on too many days like that. Still, my overall impression of Utah is that there is some great skiing to be had there. Traffic notwithstanding, the resorts are easy to access and very close to the city & airport. The snow is definitely light and dry, but that means that coverage is sometimes a problem.

In the end I don't think I'll fly to Utah on my own to ski again in the foreseeable future - I'm not convinced the skiing was that much better than what's available within a day's drive of Seattle. Of course, if my company decides to send me there again next year, that's a different story.

Pictures (taken with Anya's BlackBerry) are here.

Snowbird

I've been in Salt Lake City this week for a business conference. While the actual conference itself was worthwhile, one of the ways they lure people here is by giving them a free day of skiing on the last day (Friday) of the event.

There's a lot of hype around the quality of Utah's snow. Because of its setting in the high desert, the powder here is said to be drier and fluffier - and, therefore, better. The motto "Best Snow on Earth" appears not only in hubris-laden marketing materials but even on Utah license plates.

Now, after experiencing it firsthand, I can tell you that the hype is entirely justified. We went to Snowbird today, a ski resort about 45 minutes' drive from Salt Lake City. Officially they'd received 21" of new snow overnight. But thanks to blind luck and befriending some locals, my coworker and I found untracked lines where the snow was waist deep.

Skiing in that much Utah snow is extremely fun but incredibly tiring - it's so soft and fluffy that you have to struggle to keep your skis floating through the snow rather than sinking to the bottom of it. You have to be a good skier because only the steepest runs are even skiable in conditions like that.

It was one of the best skiing days I've had in my life. I'm exhausted.