Word: snows
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They're very proud of the fact--up there in Little Cottonwood Canyon deep in the heart of Mormon-land--that it snows a lot in Alta. So when nature proves them wrong, and when it doesn't snow, they don't say much at all. But sometimes, once in a very long while, Christmas is just a little bit too white and Cottonwood goes...
...snowed lightly the first two days as we put on our parkas and our warm--ups and rode the lifts. There was already a lot of snow on the ground-nice lightsvowder, came to right above your ankles, perfect conditions for "the powder capital of the West." On the third day, the sky turned mean and the wind whipped though your warmups. It was lunch when it happened-you felt it at first, the Snow Pine lodge shook a little and the earth rumbled but there was nothing to see from the window. The earth shook, nothing, mind you, like...
There are only eight lodges in Alta and they're all on the lower side of the road--the only road leading in or out of the valley. The Alta Lodge, the Goldminer's Daughter, the Rustler, the Snow Pine--the Snow Pine was ours, cheapest of them all and at the end of the line. To get up to the road, we walked up a set of tunnel--like stairs. When you start, you can barely see the light. Below the lodges is the ski basin, rising from the basin is the ski area and behind the road...
...avalanched that winter in Alta and killed two people. The little information booth next door to the Alta Lodge got knocked flat by a mountain of snow and rubble. The Lodge itself was half--buried. There hadn't been an avalanche in Alta for a long time, a serious one for as long, well, as anyone could remember...
...okay to ski tomorrow," Joe Capp, owner of the Snow Pine, told us. "They're going to blast it all away this afternoon." Blast? Oh yeah, didn't you know, they fire Howitzer shells into the side of the mountain to make the snow come down. That way you didn't take the chance that someone would be skiing or standing in the way of an area with avalanche potential. Predictability was the key-take the risk out of it; shoot it down from those little wooden sheds on the snow cliff-with the World War II heavy guns mounted...