Ski Week at Alta in the Wasatch

Ski week, day at Alta. The place has been running lifts since January 1939, and it's still one of only three ski-only areas left in the country — no snowboards, just skiers, which changes the feel of the lift lines in a way that's hard to pin down.

The summit sits at 11,068 feet and the base at about 8,530, so even the easy runs come with views straight down Little Cottonwood Canyon. We worked our way across a fair chunk of it — 2,614 skiable acres is more than we could touch in a day, and we didn't try. Clouds came and went most of the morning, with a strip of blue opening up over the ridgeline by midday.

They average somewhere around 545 inches of snow a year here, and it shows. Coverage everywhere, drifts burying the ropes along the edges of the runs, snow stacked on the roofs of the buildings near the base. We stopped enough times on the way down to catch our breath and grin at each other, then kept going until the legs said otherwise. Back tomorrow.