Report from April 3, 2024

Yesterday morning I met up with Juan and Martin for a stroll up Fantasy Ridge at Solitude, UT.

Fantasy Ridge is terrain that only opens a few days per year.

It’s challenging, wild, beautiful, alpine, short, and sweet.

It’s also one of the 97 lines in legendary Andrew McLean’s “Chuting Gallery” book.

He calls the zone “Honeycomb Cliffs.”

We hit the first lift a few minutes past 9am and zipped up to the Summit Chair arriving at 9:35am.

You have to check in with ski patrol and have full avalanche gear to hike up the knife ridge.

We did so at 9:36am and patrol informed us they had already closed Fantasy Ridge…

We had no idea the opening would be so short – we figured we had until 10am.

It was already getting hot.

Our improvised Plan B was hiking up to the “Evergreen Chutes.”

Martin guided us up there and chose “Ortovox Chute” for us to ski.

It was steep and treed to start before funneling into a proper chute.

The snow wasn’t great but it was good enough to create fun and flow.

We blasted down the chute dancing with the snowballs we’d kicked off while skiing down.

From there we rolled back up the Summit chair and skied a groomer then a Honeycomb Canyon.

I took advantage of the opportunity to head home early and pulled the plug at about 11am.

I had to pack for Alaska, work, work out, go out to dinner with my amazing wife, and get my life organized before my flight to Alaska the next morning.

Thanks, Utah!

Snow Numbers

Forecast

Photos