I had to run to Utah to support a friend again. This was just a quick overnight trip, but I built some time into the schedule for a 4 or 5 hour trip into the mountains. I wanted to get some elevation and started looking at the ski areas. Alta Ski Resort had a couple of peaks with trip stats that fit into my time frame... it was decided.

I arrived at the ski lodge parking lot at 7:15am. It was a clear and cool morning, with frost on the windows of the cars in the lot that had stayed overnight. I wasn't sure what to expect with the crowd, but I certainly wasn't alone, as about 5 backcountry skiers left at the same time I did. I was on snowshoes, but kept up with most of them. All of them were quite chatty and friendly.

As I headed up the initial 500 feet, it was shaded, cool, breezy, and quite boring on a steep ski run. Eventually, as I was about to break out into the sun, I saw a moose on the ski run in front of me. If I was 5 minutes quicker, I would have had amazing photos (or been gored). I was fortunate to capture it in a few photos though.

From higher up on the mountain, I had a great view of Mount Baldy. Despite a 50% chance of showers, the sky was perfectly blue. I was stoked to be up in the high mountains on such a nice day.

I continued to following the run, watching people skiing down the numerous couloirs on Mount Baldy.

I finally hit a saddle near the top of the Collins Lift. This then led to a cat track that got me to the saddle between Sugarloaf Peak and Mount Baldy. The terrain was awesome up here!

A LOT of people all converged on the saddle at the same time. One kid was 9 years old and was about to ski down... very cool! I knew I only had time for one peak. From the saddle it looked like Mount Baldy had a transition from snow to rock, back to snow... each change of snowshoes is a bit time consuming, so I picked Sugarloaf Mountain. It had solid snow until the last 100 feet.

The scramble up Sugarloaf went well and soon I was checking out views of the surrounding Wasatch Mountains. Although a few clouds were forming, it was still sunny, not windy, but cold enough that the snow stayed hard. I never did punch through the snow (even in the non-groomed terrain).

Great day in the mountains and very cool to hit a high peak like that only 30 minutes drive from the hotel!

Not hard... basically punch "Alta Ski Resort" into your Google Maps and go!

I started hiking up straight from the Alta Ski Lodge. I pretty much just followed the main blue ski run in Collins Gulch. This leads to the base of Mount Baldy, before turning east and switchbacking to a ridge. It then traverses to the 10,600 foot saddle between Mount Baldy and Sugarloaf Mountain.

From the saddle, Sugarloaf Mountain is an easy scramble.