Brian Head Ski Resort is located in the same mountainous area as Cedar Breaks National Monument, just minutes from it. It is 12 mi from Rt 15 and totally 27 mi North of Cedar City. The resort itself is not very attractive, but the slopes, the trails, the views, the chair lifts are fantastic! It is always smart to check the weather over there before going because even when we have warmth and sunshine in Zion, the winds in Brian Head can be unbearable and the snowstorms blinding. So we waited this year for a long time until we picked the best day, which was April 4th…pretty late in the season :-). This is how it looked:
Empty chairs, well graded slopes…and it was Friday for God’s sake…Where were the people? Is this economic crisis hitting us already or everyone is tuned to spring activities?
This is the smallest and easiest trail, by Navajo Lodge. It used to be dotted with a lot of small skiers, closely held by their instructors, or groups of snowboard beginners…The terrace used to be full with lunch eaters, hard to find an empty table. And here we are all by ourselves (we hardly caught a lonely wandering Englishman to take this picture):
For us, the consumers, it was the best! And a little surrealistic – you go down the slope – and there is no one around, you have the slope just for yourself, as if owning it for those several minutes! The sun is kissing your cheeks and the wind is cooling the well layered body, you fly down like a bird with no obstacles, just the smooth white terrain – tell me about the feeling of “present”, “the power of now”!
This is the view once you get to the top with the longest lift from Navajo Lodge. Is is always so beautiful to see that huge space with colors, especially the red rocks sticking from green forest and white slopes…The only problem – when you go up, you are excited to go down as fast as you can on those empty trails together with the wind… I checked – it takes 7-8 minutes to go up on the chairlift and some 3-4 min down – so in an hour you can make up to 5 rounds.
There are houses on the sides of the skiing slope – but I never saw anyone there. Just an investment, I guess…
And here we are color matched 🙂 on the top of our beloved mountain:
That day we skied from 1 pm till 4:30 pm, which is considered half day and it was enough ant even too much for our untrained legs. We went 15 times downhill. The next Saturday, which was April 12th, for the closing of the season they declared half price for tickets…it was certainly an incentive to skip Tai-ji and leave all spring work at home and go skiing once more. The weather couldn’t be better. And again – there were extremely few people skiing on all 3 mountains with all the 8 chair lifts operating…Good for us, but not so good for the owners of the lifts who were in my eyes – just waisting electricity and not saving nature… But what can you do – you just enjoy!