Over the weekend, FasterSkier.com received its first report of skiing for the 2006-2007 winter season.
Eli Brown, head coach of the Utah Cross Country Ski Team, sent us the following pictures from Saturday morning at Alta, Utah. The Utah team was able to get in a bit of early on-snow training. Alta is at about 9,000 feet elevation and is a 30-45 minute drive from Salt Lake City. The snow came just a few days after 90 degree heat in Salt Lake. No report on how long the snow lasted (hours?).
This is the earliest report of skiable snow we've seen since 2000 when, like this year, Utah's Wasatch mountains were hit in early September. In 2004, the first report to FasterSkier.com of skiing was on Sept 24 from Steamboat, Colorado. In 2005, the first ski photos came in from Yellowknife, NT, Canada on Sept 28. This obviously excludes reports of glacier skiing.
