We promised you snowboarding!

We promised you snowboarding and here it is. We have spent the last 10 days in Park City Utah in order to get in a bit of snowboarding. Symi, as you can see has taken to it like a duck to water - complete with snowboarder attitude.

We spent the first day at Park City Mountain Resort where Symi continued to work on her turns - having had less than a day and a half on the snow to that point. Fiona was happy to stay with developing her confidence again. As you can see in the photos Fiona has purchased a helmet. This has been great as now she doesn't feel she is about to concuss herself when she falls off. Interestingly when we last snowboarded (about 13 years ago) very few people, apart from kids, wore helmets. Now nearly everyone does. 

Next, after a rest day/school day, we headed off to the Canyons which is the largest resort in the Park City area. By the end of the day Symi had her turns sorted on the poetically named "Snow Dancer". The following day we

headed out with Rob to explore the wider area. Symi found some of the runs a bit steep but was able to slide down pretty much anything. Her traversing is excellent due in part to her skill and in part to the boards being much more forgiving than when Rob and Fiona learnt. After those two days we were all pretty tired and needed a break. Not to mention needing to get a bit of school work under our belts. We quickly discovered that school work after snowboarding is not a viable option!

 

During our rest days we visited the excellent Utah Olympic Museum. The highlight of the visit was a tour around the ski jumps and the bobsleigh track used for the 2002 Winter 

Add $200 and you can do this for real!

Olympics. It was very impressive standing at the top looking down the K120 ski jump. It was enough to put butterflies in your stomach. The atmosphere  must have been incredible for those about to jump with an audience of 20,000 waiting below. Since 2002 the distance the jumpers are attaining has increased so much that they would have to extend the jumps here if they were to host the Olympics again, which they are hoping to do.

Looking down from the top of the K120 ski jump, scary!

Day three and there was talk of powder. We were up early and waiting in line for the lift to open at 9am. We don't wake early here as it's already 'summer time' and it only gets light

Early for the lift, civilised waiting!!

at 7.30am. We have become slow in the morning and it takes a little while to breakfast, pack up and drive the RV the 4 miles to the slopes then park in the back area of the parking lot (note correct term) where they relegate the RVs to. Symi and Fiona did a warm up on Snow Dancer and then met up with Rob on Boa - a very long run which had a great surface with bits of powder. We all had a long and very enjoyable day exploring the resort.  One memorable run was Harmony which weaved through an enclave of very expensive houses. Some of these houses were up to $21 million. Come evening we were all very ready for bed.

 

Thursday and another day on the slopes with lots of powder. We drove up through a snowstorm - great driving thanks Rob. Had some early difficulties in that the boards would not 

Fresh snow, let's go!



slide in the powder - quickly fixed with a wax buff for $5. But only after all the Waller's had to come back down on the chair lift as we could not get our boards sliding down the hill. Lovely snow and good fun but only a short day as  Rob had come down with some sort of stomach bug in the night and was not feeling the best and Fiona and Symi were just plain tired by early afternoon.



Fiona carving on Boa



Yesterday we dragged ourselves away from the slopes and are spending a couple of nights in Salt Lake City. This morning we went to the famous Tabernacle to see the Choir and Orchestra perform it's 4411th weekly show that is

broadcast around the world. The choir and orchestra sounded amazing and we were lucky to hear an infrequent performance of the bell section that was surprisingly enjoyable and interesting to watch. Last night we escaped sub-zero temperatures for the first time in three weeks, this afternoon it is currently dumping snow here! Tomorrow we are off to Moab, we could just as easily drive the 30 miles back to the snow/fresh powder, this life is tough.

 

'Rest'day, awesome dry singletrack. Notice ski jumps in background.