I've been delinquent in sharing ski reporting this winter with my DCSki friends.  I actually did my migration to UT early this year and began skiing out here on Dec 5, 2025.  But December was pretty grim with little snowfall and temps so mild places like Snowbird had trouble making snow even at night.  In early Jan 2026 there was a saving streak of about 9 days of snow with totals approaching 60 inches.  I missed part of that time returning to VA for about a week for family reasons.

The skiing was excellent when I got back on the slopes here about a week ago, 8 Jan 2026.  But now (16 Jan) UT is in another long, high pressure system.  Conditions are pretty good still, but firming-up.

5 Dec 2025, my first ski day of the winter was at Solitude, UT.  They only had about 650' of vertical open and the lines were longish, but it was skiing:-)

Same deal on 7 Dec, but the sun came out.  High pressure and dry, mild weather would be an all-to-familiar pattern in Dec in UT.

My first ski day at Snowbird was Dec 9 and to their credit they had top to bottom skiing off the tram, but only a few crowded routes down.  You had to beware of meat missiles in the heavy trail traffic with firm conditions.

{Isn't an upside down flag a sign of distress at sea?}

Big Emma slope at Snowbird on the 9th:

11 Dec, these two photos were taken on Regulator Johnson trail at Snowbird.

18 Dec at Snowbird near the Little Cloud lift

I went to San Diego to visit family for Christmas for five days.  We had a nice time checking out the sea lions at LaJolla beach.

On the return drive to UT we stopped for a meal at The Cliffside Restaurant in St. George, UT.  This photo doesn't do justice to the views from our table.

28 Dec 2025 back on Regulator at Snowbird, if you have to ski a WROD at least it's 300 yards wide with 3000' vertical drop:

These two photos are from 31 Dec 2025, still pretty scratchy conditions at Snowbird.

Jan 2026: I returned from a brief visit to the east during the first week of Jan and everything had changed.  Most of Snowbird's terrain was now open due to a total of about 60" of snow in the first 10 days of the month.

8 Jan 2026, Snowbird, my first true powder day of the season, about 8 new inches, but it came at the end of numerous prior snow days and skied even deeper in many spots.  Conditions were excellent.

9 Jan back at Snowbird, UT:

More good skiing off Little Cloud chair.

But I also started getting runs off the Cirque Traverse to Middle and Lower Cirque areas.

11 Jan 2026 was perhaps my favorite day so far this season in UT, Snowbird had opened Mineral Basin and conditions were still powdery, but now with bright sunshine.

View of Mt Timpanogos from Mineral Basin

Ego boosting terrain off the Baldy chair in Mineral Basin

Challenging terrain beside the Mineral chair lift line.  It all skied GOOD.

The Road to Provo was now open too, leading to more good skiing on the frontside of the mountain.

14 Jan 2026 I returned to Solitude for the first time in more than a month.  Most everything was open except Honeycomb Canyon.

15 Jan 2026, very nice day at Snowbird.  Snow still chalky in spots and even pockets of wind drift.

This is Near Bookends area in Mineral Basin, a friend and I lapped this area 4 or 5 times it was so good.

Silver Fox on the front/Peruvian side of the mtn skied quite well too.

What's next?  In a moment of weakness, when conditions were poor a couple weeks ago, my son convinced me to spend the last 11 days of January in the Alps.  Four of us are going over.  Itinerary includes Geneva, Chamonix, Bern and Grindelwald and will include skiing and non-skiing activities.  Not sure if I'll be able to document any of it real time here, but I'll share reports when I return. 

Wow, have fun in Europe! 

My daughter and I will be heading to Utah at the end of this week. Not the ideal conditions, but we will make the best of it. We are planning 2 days at Alta, and we are up in the air for the third ski day. With the small amount of snow they've had in the past two weeks, I'm leaning towards Deer Valley for some groomers. Is that crazy? We have Ikon so the other options are Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton. 

eggraid wrote:

My daughter and I will be heading to Utah at the end of this week. Not the ideal conditions, but we will make the best of it. We are planning 2 days at Alta, and we are up in the air for the third ski day. With the small amount of snow they've had in the past two weeks, I'm leaning towards Deer Valley for some groomers. Is that crazy? We have Ikon so the other options are Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton. 

 Deer Valley and Park City weren't able to make much snow in December at all because it was too warm.  Still less than 60% open.  Best to check and see which areas are open before making a decision.  Even for groomers LCC/BCC are a better bet in the next week.

I completed my ski trip to Europe over the period of Jan 20-31, 2026.  Now back in sunny, mild Utah where the high temps have been around 50 degs for an extended period. The trip to the Alps was great, but also quite demanding.  We used trains and buses to get around and schlepped a lot of gear, there were four of us in the party, two skiers, two non-skiers.  I skied six days and we devoted five days of the trip to travel/relocations and non-skiing activities.  Our gateway airport was Geneva, Switzerland.  From there we went to Chamonix, France for the first half of the trip, then trained over to Grindelwald/Jungfrau area of Switzerland for the second half.

Vince and I skied the Vallee Blanche one day while in Chamonix. 

My fav photo from that day:

Here is a blow by blow account of our Vallee Blanche excursion with some photos:  see here

Here are more photos from other days of lift served skiing during the trip.

Brevent/Flegere ski area in the Chamonix Valley, France:

Grands Montets, Chamonix Valley, this place had strong similarities to Jackson Hole with a fair amount of skilled skiers/boarders partaking in serious and extensive off-piste terrain.

Everything in this view was being skied:

Le Tour ski area in the Chamonix Valley:

Had two days skiing in the Grindelwald area, first one had bad flat light, not nearly as clear as this photo might imply.  I skied in Mr. Magoo/snowplow mode while sharp eyed Euros blew by me?!?  This is from the Mannlichen ski area.  This gondi had 3100' vertical rise.

This is another gondola at same resort, even bigger with 4543' vertical rise and 26 heated seats inside. Had a ride in the Eiger Express all to myself:

Never skied a place before with trains tooling around various parts of the ski slopes, amazing infrastructure.

Next day I returned to Mannlichen in the morning, but also skied Grindelwald-First ski area in the afternoon, for a ski area two-fer.  They are a few miles apart and connected by two different 20-30 minute train lines, and also by bus.  My wife and daughter were able to buy a pedestrian ticket that allowed them to ride gondolas and trains to same terrain I was skiing. So we interacted quite a bit together during an extraordinary day.  We started together on the Eiger Express 26 pass gondi:

Hotel Bellevue des Alpes at Mannlichen/Kleine Scheidegg train station, elevation 6762'.  This hotel was featured quite a bit in the old Clint Eastwood movie The Eiger Sanction.

Meanwhile I went skiing with gondolas, trains and bubble chairs.

After a couple hours we all caught a 30 minute cogwheel train ride to Grindelwald.  It was a highlight of the day.

After the cogwheel train we caught a bus for about a mile to the Grindelwald-First ski area.  In the background of this view of the Grindelwald bus depot is the North Face of the Eiger, one of the greatest tests in the world of rock climbing.  Here's what google says about it:

The Eiger North Face (Nordwand) in Switzerland rises roughly 1,800 meters (5,900 feet) above the Kleine Scheidegg area. It is the biggest north face in the Alps, stretching up to the summit of the Eiger mountain, which sits at an elevation of 3,967 meters (13,015 feet) above sea level. 

Then the three of us rode the 30 minute First gondola to dine together at a lofty restaurant at the First ski area.

Next to the restaurant was The Cliff Walk, an extensive area of elevated walking platforms, however low vis conditions rolled in:

I found some good snow and light late in the day off the high elevation Oberjoch chair at Grindelwald-First while the ladies went for an indoor swim in the town of Grindelwald.

These last views of the Eiger/Jungfrau area made me emotional.  Not sure if I'll ever get back to ski the Alps again.  The scenery, the verticality, the infrastructure, the food, are all amazing.