Pictures from Utah, March 1999

Charming accommodations

The "Best Rest Inn", a quaint little truck stop motel in Ogden, our home for a week (for better and especially for worse).

People on skis

1. Which way should we go?
2. No, really, which way should we go?
3. I mean it: which way should we go?
4. Denny did this a lot...
5. ...but occasionally he did some of this, too.
6. Barbara took extra precaution against the sun at Alta.
7. Harriet's off to the races.
8. Terry points the way down...er, up.

People off skis

1. Hangin' at Snowbasin.
2. Hangin' at The Canyons, and watching The Chris and Peter Show.

The Chris and Peter Show

Chris and Peter spent some time at the base of The Canyons entertaining our group with some aerial stunts. It's too bad I didn't get any shots of the landings. They were the best part of the show.

Tough terrain at Alta

Here's three views of the Alta side of Mt. Baldy. The first shows a large portion of the mountain. In the lower middle, in the shadow of the peak, you can see a black speck. That's a skier, going across the traverse at the top of the Ballroom bowl. Note also the long chute that goes from the top middle of the photo down towards the right bottom.

The second image shows a little bit closer view. You can see the chute more clearly, and a few more black specks headed across the top of the bowl. These skiers are as high up as you can get via the ski lifts.

But you can hike to the top of Mt. Baldy, if you're crazy. In the third photo, an extreme closeup of the top of that chute, you can see a couple of crazy people.

Racing at Snowbasin

There were races being held at Snowbasin on the ending weekend of our trip: Men's and Women's National Championships in the Downhill and Super-G, and also a pair of FIS races in the same events. I was there the day of one of the FIS races. (Its official results are here.)

A couple of shots from the finish area: the course itself and the leaderboard, where I am guessing they wrote times down as the racers finished. I didn't stay here for the race, because I wanted to get some pictures from a better vantage point higher up the course.

This was my view of most of the upper half of the course. Close-up photos below from three areas of this photo: 1) the very top (almost), where there was a ridge where the racers caught some major air; 2) the gates just to the right of the blonde lady's head in this photo; 3) the gatekeeper out in the middle of the slope near the same gate.

As I said, there was this ridge where the racers caught major air. Unfortunately it was a considerable distance up the hill from where I sat. The first photo here shows as close as I could get, even with my mondo 230mm lens. There's a racer in this photo, a speck right in the middle, just beneath a pair of red gates and yellow flags. At least I could scan the photos at really high resolution to blow them up somewhat. And luckily it was a sunny day: The racers' shadows show you how high up in the air they are.

I did, however, manage to get a few good shots of racers up close.

And here's a shot of the gatekeeper that I thought might make a nice photo. Indeed, it turned out well enough that I also turned it into a desktop picture.