Tidbits
- A 20″ life-changing pow day at Snowbird.
- What it’s like to score first chair at Park City.
- I am now Italian. Check out these pastas I’ve been making.
March 2023
| Su | M | T | W | Th | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 3/1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 4/1 |
Where In The World Was I?
- Sandy, UT
- ⛷️ Snowbird x2
- ⛷️ Park City
- Salt Lake City, UT
The Life-Changing Snowbird Pow Day
This day changed the course of my life. There was the life I was living before this day and then the new life I began living after this day.
Lemme explain.
I see an epic pow day on OpenSnow coming up and decide to hit the legendary Snowbird. I wake up to this:
Stoke is high.
All systems are go and we hop on the ski bus up Little Cottonwood Canyon and scored a seat.
This was my first time taking it up while the canyon was closed for avalanche mitigation so I wasn’t too sure what to expect.
The bus drove up to the mouth of the canyon, then sat behind the other 2 transit buses, waiting for the canyon to open up, scheduled at 8:30am.
At about 8:10am, a police passes us and escorts the buses about halfway up the canyon, where we stop again until 9am when the canyon finally opens.
The buses skipped the entire line of cars waiting on Wasatch Blvd. We were amongst the very first people to enter the canyon that morning… Remember, 20″ of snow in 24hrs… The stoke was getting quite high.
I think I got 2nd or 3rd tram, not too sure, but it didn’t really matter because there was still fields of fresh untracked powder when I got to the top.
The snow was INCREDIBLE. Full sections of untouched, knee deep pow turns, snow blowing up into my face from my turns.
I stopped on my second run. This about captures the situation:
Once Regulator Johnson got skied up, I started exploring more areas. The Cirque Traverse opened up and I hit that, spotting a line from the lift.
And oh my LORD…
Towards the afternoon, I took at tram ride and spotted a line off of Baldy. I hadn’t skied that area yet so I checked it out. Turns out you need to hike to it (~10min), but it was well worth it.
Look at all that untracked! Oh so juicy…
Let me remind you once again… 20″ of fresh pow.
This ain’t no 6″ of fresh snow. We’re talking: snow hitting the quads, powder blowing up into the face, nothing but skiing on clouds.
The day just continued to deliver. I skied basically bell to bell, grabbing the second-to-last tram ride for the day. My knees didn’t hurt and boots weren’t digging into my ankle so I just kept skiing and skiing. By 3pm there were still pockets of fresh pow.
It’s really hard to describe in words what happened this day… It just might have been one of the best days of my entire life, not to mention the best ski day of the last 3 years…
This is one of those experiences that you remember for the rest of your life…
As an extra little bonus, I ended up 9th on the leaderboard for vertical ft. skied that day for all Ikon pass skiers. Nice.
A Day To Recover
I was so exhausted that I took a day to just chill, recover, and get some mini-projects done. I think this was my first day in months where I didn’t either: go to a coffee shop or ski.
Gave myself a little haircut (long overdue 😅) too.
The haircut was the biggest task on the list. I had high hopes of getting more stuff done and “being focused” but somehow I ended up watching ~4hrs of YouTube that day… That sparked a change…
Quitting YouTube…
Ever since I started tracking how much time I spend on good habits (deep work, meditation, reading, exercise) and bad habits (YouTube), I’ve started to wake up a bit to how much I spend watching YouTube videos.
After overextending a bit, I finally admitted to myself that “I have a problem”
Funny enough, my first thought when I wrote that down was one of the affirmations I’ve been saying twice a day… “I am a problem solver.” And I am, so I can fix this problem!
I decided to set my phone’s app usage timer for YouTube to 0min for a day and give it a go.
As you can imagine, it was a disaster. That day, I…
- Meditated
- Walked for 30min completely disconnected
- Read more than usual
- Watched the dogs playing and running around in the park
- Got a full gym workout in
- Ended the day NOT feeling exhausted and instead felt accomplished
Like yeesh I’m never doing THAT again!
Since then, I have started watching videos again, but it’s been so much more in control and intentional. I set the timer to 0min and when I want to use it (like just while eating), I’ll just unset the timer, watch, then reset the timer to 0min after.
(I’ve been trying to keep up with this banking disaster since Silicon Valley Bank went under 😅 Fingers crossed it’s an isolated event…)
The real tell will be how this plays out in the long term (more than just a couple days), but for now I’m feeling much better.
Park City First Chair!
It was gonna be hard to live up to that Snowbird day, but I decided to sneak an 8″ pow day in at Park City. I learned from the last time I was there (standing in line for 1 hour for the gondola) and got there early.
How early, you ask?
Well I was literally the second person in line for the main chair lift… I got there at about 8am and they opened at 8:45am (usually 9am).
I got some pow day strategy tips from a local on the lift. It was a GORGEOUS bluebird day and I got the privilege to be the first to ski down some beautiful untouched runs.
I headed up to Jupiter and spent most of the rest of the day there…
I lapped that west face side a couple times and even did the hike up to score some unreal untouched pow turns. It was hard to not compare with Snowbird’s day, but I think I had more runs where I had just linked pow turn after pow turn of untouched snow than at Snowbird. What an amazing experience.
I really do feel like the stoke of skiing has reignited for me with these new boots. I’m so grateful that I was able to exchange them out.
One More Pow Day…
Okay oneeeeee more… Except this one didn’t end nearly as well…
6″ at Snowbird on Saturday. I decided to give it a go. Got second tram, but quickly the lift lines turned to be a hinderance… Everyone and their mother was out skiing.
The snow was decent, but a little more dense and grainy (it rained a bit the night before).
Nonetheless I had a couple beautiful runs and it was SUCH a beautiful day. I wished to have skied more because there was so much untouched, but waiting 15-20min per run (45min+ for the tram) was just a huge speed bump.
I finally decided to call it a bit early and be grateful for the turns I did get in.
It really made me feel grateful for all the weekdays I’ve been able to ski. I’ve been blessed with practically zero lift lines compared to this day. Having the freedom to choose how I spend my time and be able to ski on weekdays is something that would be really hard to give up now that I’ve “drank the Koolaid.”
Food Update: I’m Now Italian
I’m on a pasta kick.
- Mushroom + butter pasta
- Red sauce pasta w/ zucchini + asparagus
- Pizza w/ sauteed veggies (zucchini, spinach, bell pepper, asparagus) – sauteing is definitely the play
- My Pie Pizza in Holladay with the half-pizza and garlic knots
Work Updates
I’ve been kinda taking a little break from working given all the skiing. But here are some updates:
- Updated Twitter Content Generation system
- Been trying to actually apply, practice, and internalize the persuasive writing learnings I’ve read and am reading about…
- Finish Ca$hvertising. A bit less exciting of a read, but still some valuable tips to learn.
- Started combing back through past book notes (a reason why I love Obsidian and my second brain) and reapplying learnings. There’s some great stuff packed in there!
- Business venture update: We picked an opportunity to pursue, validated the feasibility of a solution, and started creating a lead magnet offer. Thread.
✌️Catch Ya Next Week
$13 for a dozen eggs?? I mean they are organic and pasture raised but still, yeeeeeesh.
