The snow has been drifting down in larger quantities than usual this winter, and we’ve sampled it plenty. Now, I find myself with the daunting task of summarizing our 31 days of boarding during the 2021-2022 season in a meaningful yet concise way. I will do my best as I wade through a season in which we visited the resorts more frequently than ever before as a couple and, appropriately, also had more injuries than any other year. The augmentation of the quantity of our slope companions was another unusual trend; Jason and I started out on the lifts alone but were ultimately joined by just about everyone. So, without further waxing, let’s glide through the 2021-2022 boarding season.

Date	Monday, December 27th, 2021
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Snow	12 inches in prior 24 hours. Base depth of 61 inches. Most rocks were covered.
Terrain	Summit (first time in a couple years)
Time	2:30-4:15 (1.75 hours)
Crowds	Few people on the more difficult terrain due to blackout date, but lots of parents teaching children elsewhere.
Points of Interest/Notes	Jonesing!

Date	Friday, December 31st, 2021 (New Year’s Eve)
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	5 degrees, -1 with windchill
Snow	23 inches overnight
Terrain	Eagle
Time	1:00-4:30 (3.5 hours)
Crowds	Busy elsewhere but not on Eagle
Points of Interest/Notes	Toes froze! The delicious powder in the untracked areas kept us going.

Date	Wednesday, January 5th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Snow	4 inches overnight, 1 inch every hour throughout the day
Terrain	Powderhorn and Eagle
Time	Afternoon
Points of Interest/Notes	Joined by our long-time boarding buds A.B. and J.R. The snow was heavy and wet.

Date	Monday, January 17th, 2022 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Inversion in the valleys, but blue skies at the resort. Temperatures in the 40s while they only got up to 33 in Salt Lake City due to the inversion.
Snow	Nothing new. Soft due to warmth.
Time	2:15-4:15 (2 hours)
Crowds	Annoying due to holiday! Parking lot filled at 11:00.
Points of Interest/Notes	Two weeks without precipitation

Date	Friday, January 28th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	33-degree high, blue skies
Snow	Non-concrete, even in the shade
Terrain	Rachel’s Run, Golden Needle
Time	11:45-4:15 with two short breaks (3.75 hours)
Crowds	Great Western and Sunshine were crowded. Golden Needle was packed with speeding idiots. Rachel’s Run’s only idiots were the ones we brought with us.
Points of Interest/Notes	Turned out to be Brighton’s 85th anniversary, which was celebrated with fireworks.

Date	Saturday, January 29th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	High 30s
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Majestic for the noobs and Pioneer for the rest
Time	11:00-4:30 (5 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	A niece and two nephews joined us. A couple of them were boarding for their first time. The skier was so excited he rode with Jason before their lessons.

Date	Friday, February 4th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	28 degrees, sunshine
Snow	No new snow for a month. Patches of dirt and rock showing through. A few icy spots here and there.
Terrain	Apex and Moonbeam
Time	2:15-4:15 (2 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	Our nephew was able to keep up with us on Moonbeam and Apex. Hooray for ski lessons!

Date	Friday, February 11th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 40s
Snow	No new snow for 5-6 weeks. Some hillsides were bare.
Terrain	Apex and Summit. Plus, a few mogully spots prompted, and later regretted, by our nephew.
Time	2 hours
Crowds	None on Summit
Points of Interest/Notes	An enthusiastic nephew and our friend A.B. joined us. They got along well. Little Dollie Waffles!

Date	Friday, February 18th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	High 30s and sunny
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Summit, Apex
Time	2 hours
Crowds	Got caught in large swarms of skiers on Summit. What the what!
Points of Interest/Notes	Too many people!

Date	Sunday, February 20th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 40s, cloudy and windy
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Timberline, Sensation, North Star, and South Star
Time	Unknown
Crowds	Blackout day, so less people
Points of Interest/Notes	Sunrise seemed more protected from the wind. Sunrise’s lift lacks in speed (nine minutes to go 1,000 feet in elevation), but it also lacks in people.

Date	Tuesday, March 1st, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 40s, sunny and warm
Snow	Ground was slightly more covered after a foot of snow the week before. Surface turned icy around 3:30.
Terrain	Sunrise, Summit, Apex
Time	1:30-4:15 (2.75 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	My dad and our nephew came with us. Dad got a blister after three runs and spent the rest of the afternoon at the lodge drinking beer.

Date	Friday, March 4th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 40s
Snow	Snow dumped for about half an hour during the day.
Terrain	Sunrise, Summit
Time	Unknown
Points of Interest/Notes	So much disfunction! J.R. came with us.

Date	Sunday, March 6th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Snow	14 inches with 7 overnight
Terrain	Sunrise, Summit, Eagle, Apex, Powderhorn
Time	First chair to last chair (6.5 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	We stayed overnight at Solitude, a last-minute arrangement. Our nephew joined us.

Date	Wednesday, March 9th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	Cold! 20 degrees with 16 MPH wind making it feel like 4 degrees.
Snow	13 inches overnight, 24 inches by day’s end
Terrain	Rachel’s Run +
Time	2:15-4:45 (2.5 hours)
Crowds	None. Maybe many Ikon pass days have been depleted?
Points of Interest/Notes	Toes objected!

Date	Friday, March 18th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	Mid 30s and sunny
Snow	89-inch base but no new snow
Terrain	Rachel’s Run, Lone Star, Thor
Time	2:00-5:30 (3.5 hours)
Crowds	The parking lot was completely full, but we didn’t see many people on the runs.
Points of Interest/Notes	We gave a nephew a taste for Rachel’s Run, but then stuck to Thor and Lonestar the rest of the day as they had no one on them.

Date	Friday and Saturday, March 25th and 26th, 2022
Resort	Big Sky, Montana
Weather	47 degrees, 53 degrees
Snow	Ranged from icy, to slushy, to sloppy
Terrain	El Dorado, Southern Comfort, Nile, Pacifier, Swift Current, Calamity Jane, Powder Seeker, Upper Morningstar, Mr. K, Lobo, Lobo Meadows
Time	4.2 hours, 3.5 hours
Points of Interest/Notes	See dedicated blog post.

Date	Friday, April 1st, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	High near 40, a perfect spring day
Snow	Nothing new
Time	12:45-3:30 (2.75 hours)
Crowds	The deadest we’d seen Solitude. Spring break made it less peopled rather than more.
Points of Interest/Notes	I had preproduction meetings right after snowboarding, making for a long day! A nephew and niece joined us.

Date	Saturday, April 2nd, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	An ideal spring day with temperatures in the 40s and a little wind
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Thor, Lonestar, Thunderhead, Thunder Road, Pioneer
Time	2:45-6:30 (3.75 hours)
Crowds	Brighton’s parking lot filled. (Solitude’s only half filled.) All the riders were hanging out at the board park, and there were no lift lines.
Points of Interest/Notes	We threw out plans of cleaning to go boarding even though we had gone the day before and were going the day after.

Date	Sunday, April 3rd, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Mid-40s
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Apex and Sunrise
Time	12:15-5:15 (4.5 hours)
Crowds	None
Points of Interest/Notes	We were accompanied by a hefty group of 8 comprised of several first-timers and some old-timers.

Date	Saturday, April 9th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	Almost 40
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Thor
Time	2:15-4:30 (2.25 hours)
Crowds	Nearly full parking lot but no lift lines
Points of Interest/Notes	Jason found me some modest jumps, which I managed to get a little air off.

Date	Sunday, April 10th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	30 degrees
Snow	Mostly just a sheet of ice. Where traffic was substantial, the ice had been ceaselessly chipped away until it had the texture of drifting sand.
Terrain	Main Street, Same Street, Dean’s Dash, Abba’s Alley, and Little Dollie
Time	1:30-5:00 (3.5 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	Little Dollie and Abba’s Alley were a frozen mess. The tops of the lifts also, inconveniently, were slathered with ice. This was easily the worse snow we’d experienced in years. We had my brother’s family and his sister-in-law with us. That brother started figuring out how to toe carve and link carves together, which he was thrilled about.

Date	Tuesday, April 12th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	19-degree high. Winds at Snowbird gusted up to 75 MPH that morning. Solitude was warmer; I even unzipped my pant vents for a few minutes when the sun came out.
Snow	10 inches overnight. Snow was much better than it was on the afternoon of March 6th; the ice was more covered.
Terrain	Eagle and Powderhorn. Jason did the Memorial Chutes in Honeycomb Canyon.
Time	1:15-3:45 (2.5 hours)

Date	Wednesday, April 13th, 2022
Resort	Brighton, Utah
Weather	Low to mid-20s, 14-17 MPH wind
Snow	Six more inches in the last 24 hours with 4 overnight. More tracked out than Solitude the day before.
Terrain	Rachel’s Run, Thor, Lonestar
Time	12:30-4:15 (3.75 hours)
Crowds	More people on the slopes than the Saturday before, but still no lift lines.
Points of Interest/Notes	Two friends came with us. We were a raucous group! The boys found a lot of untouched powder off Rachel’s Run and made repeated requests to ride it again.

Date	Friday, April 15th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Mid-30s, sunny
Snow	Nothing new
Terrain	Memorial Chutes in Honeycomb Canyon, Timberline, Blue Spruce, and North Star
Time	Unknown
Points of Interest/Notes	Memorial Chutes area had plenty of powder still. I liked it enough to want to try it again soon. The Honeycomb Return was closed even though it was supposed to be open. What a laborious, and hot, traverse back!

Date	Saturday, April 16th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Mid-40s
Snow	Exceedingly sticky and too soft to hold carves until later in the afternoon when it started snowing steadily.
Terrain	Memorial Chutes in Honeycomb Canyon, Timberline, Abba’s Alley, and Blue Spruce
Time	Unknown
Points of Interest/Notes	Sixth time boarding in 8 days. Hurt my knee (bursitis) getting off the lift.

Date	Wednesday, April 27th, 2022
Resort	Snowbird, Utah
Weather	50s
Snow	Snow was gluey on lower half of the mountain and too melted to hold a carve.
Terrain	Mineral Basin, Chip’s Run
Time	1:30-4:00 (2.5 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	Last operational Wednesday of the season at Snowbird and a week and a half after I hurt my knee.

Date	Friday, April 29th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Mid-30s with an insistent breeze
Snow	A few inches of powder on top of ice until the surface softened the last hour
Terrain	Alta Bird and Blue Spruce, plus some time on Moonbeam to teach a nephew
Time	2:00-5:00 (3 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	Helped a nephew link his carves.

Date	Saturday, April 30th, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 50s
Snow	Slushy and slow. All the powder from the previous day was gone.
Terrain	Summit and Apex
Time	2:00-5:15 (3.25 hours)
Points of Interest/Notes	We were joined by nieces and nephews from two families. One niece tried Summit for the first time.

Date	Sunday, May 1st, 2022
Resort	Solitude, Utah
Weather	Low 40s and cloudy. Forecast predicted rain, but instead there was snow. (Thankfully!)
Snow	Slushy but not as slow as the day before
Terrain	Apex and Sunrise. North Star was a favorite.
Time	12:30-5:00 (4 hours with break considered)
Points of Interest/Notes	Closing day at Solitude. We were joined by a large group of nieces and nephews. Many of us ate Himalayan food and giant cookies at the Roundhouse. This was the last of four days we spent on the slopes during a week with highly variable conditions. We jumped on Apex seconds before the lift closed for the season.

Date	Friday, May 13th, 2022
Resort	Snowbird, Utah
Weather	High 40s and low 50s, beautifully sunny
Snow	Snowbird received 18 inches over the week but was only open on the weekend. Snow was better than our last time at the resort. The hardness was perfect on all but the lower third of the mountain.
Terrain	Chip’s Run with chutes off West Baldy
Time	12:00-2:15 (2.25 hours)
Crowds	Only a small section of the resort was open, so it felt crowded in sections.
Points of Interest/Notes	My knee didn’t love the West Baldy Chutes as it was still swollen and hurting.

Now that I’ve given you more than too many details, let’s talk about the trends of the 21-22 season. What does all the information show, besides that I keep track of too many specifics? We snowboarded 93 hours in total. Toward the end of the season, we managed to go to the resorts 13 times in 31 days. I’m not sure we got anything else done during that month.

Some skill improvements would be expected with that many hours on the slopes, right? My seasonal progress peaked right before I injured my knee and then dropped sharply. I didn’t challenge myself as much or carve as smoothly afterward. Months later, I learned I had also fractured my talus (ankle) bone sometime while snowboarding. I ended up in a boot for two months due to that mysterious break.

And the new participants? We never would have guessed we’d have so many family members intrigued by winter sports suddenly. It was particularly a shock considering the previous interest levels of some. Many of them bought passes for the 22-23 season they enjoyed themselves so much, also a surprise.

Although Jason and I went snowboarding more times in the 21-22 season than ever before in our married life, it didn’t get dull. Why is that? Snowboarding gives you something marvelous to look forward to during the dreariest part of the year. Plus, the whole slope stretch only lasts about four months. It’s fleeting, and that’s a substantial piece of its magic. If only this post was as brief.