As promised, here are some pics of the new run that has just been cut off of Jonesy's. Before I get to those, here's a quick update on the Crescent Lift construction:

Trail Advisory - Mid Mountain Trail - Crescent Ski Lift Construction Update - Effective 7/24/08 for Pioneer Day Weekend

No trail closures due to construction are anticipated over the weekend.
Additional updates will follow as conditions and construction continues. Thank you!

On to the pix, here's an overview photo taken from just past the Pioneer Lift and looking back towards the run. The bottom right edge of the photo is perhaps a hundred or so feet uphill from Mid-Mountain Lodge.

This next photo is taken from the junction of Homerun and Jonesy's and is looking down the right side of Jonesy's where the new run begins.

This photo was taken from the old Mid-Mountain run and is looking up from there - you can get a feeling of how wide the new run is here.

Lastly, here's a shot from the same place, but looking downhill - notice how the lower portion of the new run has some nicely placed tree islands.

For those of you in Utah, enjoy the Pioneer Day holiday! I plan to get another lift construction update together next week - I've already got some cool photos of the excavation that's going on for the base terminal.

Here's a peak at the new Park City Mountain Resort snowboard video, "I Ride Park City" It will go on sale this August on pcride.com!

I got up for a great bike ride this past Saturday, and as I was riding along on the Mid-Mountain bike trail I took a quick break and snapped these photos to try to get a different perspective on the lift line for our new Crescent Lift. I apologize for the photos being a bit off in terms of color and quality, but I only had my phone with me as I wasn't planning on taking any pictures - but the views were just too tempting...
Looking down from the Mid-Mountain trail:

Looking up from the Mid-Mountain trail:

I had just ridden down from Shadow Lake (the pond that's always covered over near the base of the Jupiter Lift), and snapped a quick photo of that as well, it's kind of cool to see what things that are so covered over in the winter look like without the snow and ice:

The new Crescent Lift isn't the only big project that we're working on this summer. One of our other big projects is a major renovation of the Mid-Mountain Lodge restaurant. A number of us took a quick trip this morning up to see some of the work being done. This include pretty much gutting everything on the inside of the building (in particular the restrooms and kitchen area), building some new steps to the Lodge and putting an outside grill on the deck. I took a number of photos, check 'em out:

The cutting of the lift line for our new Crescent Lift is moving right along. The clearing is now coming over the ridge just above the base of the Ski Team lift and you may be able to see where we're marking off the area for the base terminal. This photo shows a look pretty much straight up the lift line from just a bit below where the base will be:

I'm hoping to get up on the mountain sometime next week to get some pix of some of the other projects we're working on, as well as perhaps a few more shots of the Crescent line from a different perspective.

I'm back! After a few weeks away from the office, things finally are looking like summer, even though it did snow a few inches just a week ago. But now the weather forecast is calling for temps near 90 for this weekend - I think that we may have skipped spring and gone directly to summer. Even so, many of the higher elevation trails are still snow covered and very muddy in other spots so please keep off them until they have a chance to dry out. A great resource to check out current trail conditions is the Mountain Trails Foundation's website at www.mountaintrails.org. We'll try to drop in an update here and there in our posts, but those guys are out and about everyday while I'm stuck inside the office ;)
The really cool news is that while I've been out and about for the past few weeks, our ops folks have been hard at work getting rolling with our summer projects, check out a few photos of the new lift!
The new Crescent lift line has been started, look to the left top part of the ridge, just next to the snow (Ski Team Lift on the right side of the photo).

Lift sections are already arriving (thanks for not parking in the lower part of the First Time parking lot)!

Keep checking back as I promise to post lots of photos of the new lift and our other summer improvements as things progress.

I find it hard to believe that we're nearing the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (the first one was observed back in 1970). At Park City Mountain Resort, the environment is a big event for us as we live and work in the Wasatch Mountains and we want to continue this lifestyle for us as well as for our children. Therefore for us, Earth Day isn't just April 22nd, it's all year long!
I'm excited that Park City Mountain Resort continues to expand our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint through various programs such as recycling, bio-fuels and CFL usage although the big news is that we recently committed to 100% offsetting of power from renewable resources via RECs (renewable energy credits) - see our environmental site www.saveoursnow.net and look for the press release for more details. Saveoursnow.net also give many more details on what we're currently doing, planning on doing and what you can do to help and educate yourself and others. Here are some great links to some other sites:

• www.keepwintercool.org
• www.theclimateproject.org
• www.wecansolveit.org

We've also been in the news recently talking about our environmental programs:

• The Park Record - Soul of the Green Machine
• KPCW - Radio Interview With Brent Giles and Krista Parry (link will download an MP3 file)

Happy B-Day Earth Day, we'll keep celebrating all year long!

It has been quite a long time since I last posted; early March I think. Sorry about that, but it is a measure of how good the season was for us. It never stopped snowing long enough for me to have the chance to sit down and think of something useful to say. The best I could've come up with would have been something like, "snowing again; gotta go home, dig out the house and go to bed so I can get up at 4 AM and do it all over tomorrow."
That said, some final numbers for the season from our standpoint:
406 inches of snowfall at the Summit weather plot; the first time in 34 years we've gone over 400!
500 inches of snowfall at the Jupiter weather plot; only the 3rd time in resort history we've hit that number.
On closing day we had 10 FEET of settled snow depth at our Jupiter plot and every chairlift open (Jupiter Peak too!); the first time in a long time many of us can remember that happening. Judging by the party at the top of Jupiter Peak on Sunday afternoon, I'd say many many locals were pleased with that.
Since there is still SO MUCH snow and all the runs are still in great condition, I'm sure there's many locals out there who plan on "touring" the resort until the snow melts. As we leave the resort and head off for multiple adventures outta town, Colin, David and I just want to leave the locals with a reminder that there is no more avalanche control work being done. Treat the area like the back country and use all appropriate precautions (good route finding and travel skills, along with beacon, probe, and shovel). Especially if we get a rapid warm up when there could be a REAL danger of wet loose and slab avalanches.
Have a safe spring and summer and we hope to see you again next winter.

It looks like we're going to finally get some Spring skiing and riding conditions, just in time for closing weekend. So, get out and enjoy the last turns for the 2007-2008 season - it sure has been a fun one!
In other news, I'm finally able to pass along the big news that I hinted at a couple of weeks ago, our planned capital improvements for the 2008-2009 winter season - check them out here and here's a picture to give you a hint of what we're going to be up to.