Worth the Price in P-Tex

Pebble, our trip's salvation

The original idea was pretty flawless. Ski Schweitzer and celebrate New Year’s Eve by dancing to the Clumsy Lovers. Then right before we left we checked the web. No new snow at Schweitzer, Clumsy Lovers tickets are $40 and sold out.

Time for a new plan. We were left with either Bachelor or Utah and neither had new snow.

We decided on Utah. We should have known better.

We drove all night and slept in the car. We awoke to bare spots on the runs and hordes of poeple. There was no solitude at Solitude. Folks weren’t even having a good time for their $55.

About the only joy I found at Solitude was humping the turnstiles. In order to improve the "skiing" experience they'd installed RFID tags in the passes so to get on a lift you had to slam your body against a gate until the light turned green and the turnstile unlocked. Here's an experience I'd definitely define as "a state or quality of being alone or remote from others."

Finally, at the end of the day, I stumbled into really small powder stash we spent the last hour ravishing, but soon four o’clock hit and everyone rolled up the carpets and left.

My board was trashed from the bare spots, ripped in one spot down to the wood underneath my heel and we were left to find some way to salvage New Year’s Eve. Again we were faced with a decision, Salt Lake City or Park City for New Year’s Eve? New Year’s Eve being a Sunday, we opted for Park City.

We enjoyed a good dinner in Park City, but with $78 lift tickets and cover charges of $25, $35 and $50 to get into bars with no bands we were horribly out of place. At 11 PM after forking out $10 each to get into what turned out to be a dive filled with snobs we had had enough.

I turned to Michael and said, “Pebble.”

He thought a fraction of a second and nodded.

South Bowl, worth the price in P-Tex

So off we went through the night, sleeping in a Flying J parking lot after midnight and arriving at Pebble Creek early in the morning to a light dusting of snow. The people were real, the snow fine, the tree skiing excellent and South Bowl was simply glorious.

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