Introduction

Lizy and I went on a trip to the Alta Ski Area from February 13–19, 2024. We stayed at the hotel Goldminer’s Daughter. Our ski passes were included as part of our Ikon pass, and they allowed us to ski between Alta and Snowbird, but we spent most of our time at Alta for reasons I’ll explain later in the post. For this post, I deviate from my usual chronological ordering and will sometimes explain things out of order if I think they go together.

The hotel we stayed at, the Goldminer’s Daughter, was amazing. Our stay included breakfast and dinner, which were both amazing. The staff was incredibly friendly and professional, consisting mostly of young people who wanted to work as close to the ski hill as possible. The hotel was right at the base of the Collins chairlift, which is arguably the best chairlift at Alta and therefore, I’ll assume, one of the best chairlifts in skiing. It literally couldn’t have been more convenient.

First Day Trivia

We got an early flight so we could ski part of the first day we got to the resort. We couldn’t ski a full day because of how tired we were from waking up early, so we went in early and had an early dinner. Even though we were tired, we decided to check out a weekly trivia game happening on the floor below in the hotel.

Walking into the trivia, we were surprised by all the young faces. So far, the clientele had seemed to skew old at Alta—at our hotel, but also everyone on the ski hill seemed to be at least sixty. However, it seemed like most of the participants at the trivia night were around college age. I thought, I guess there were some young visitors.

It became apparent quickly that the young, raucous participants were not patrons but workers at the ski hill and the various resorts at the base of Alta. I think we may have been the only guests playing trivia.

The first round had a bunch of Alta-specific questions such as, “What’s the current snowpack?” and “What’s the number of chairs on the Collins lift?” There were also some recurring question types that the other participants knew to look up in advance, such as “How many podiums has Mikaela Shiffrin won?”

The trivia host was one of the managers at the hotel. He was wearing sparkling red boots and a pink suit. He played Taylor Swift songs between rounds that he faded out as he was about to start a new round.

Another couple staying at the hotel came in late. Lizy had befriended them earlier in the hot tub, and they joined our team in solidarity as the one non-local team. They were older and knew a lot of historical trivia, which helped us win the historical couples round, winning us a set of Mardi Gras beads.

We ended up coming in third place, which won us a free pizza. Two teams tied for first place, so there was a tiebreaker consisting of representatives from both teams seeing who could hold a wall sit for the longest. The other Alta employees heckled the two competitors during the competition. It seemed like a fun place to work.

Overview of Skiing At Alta

We spent most of our time skiing Alta, so I can give an outline of the different zones one can ski. There are two bases at Alta: the Albion base and the Wildcat base. Our hotel was at the base of Albion Lodge, so we started most days there. I’ll describe the ski area from right to left as it appears on the map. Every chairlift feeds different areas, so I’ll describe the different runs fed by each chairlift separately.

Wildcat Chair

The Wildcat chair itself is a two-person fixed-line lift with no safety bar. Once I told Lizy this, she refused to go. Because it’s slow, fixed-line, and uncomfortable, it has the benefit of never having a long line. But since Lizy didn’t like it, I only rode it a few times. There are two gates one can go through to get to Snowbird; otherwise, all the runs go back to the Albion base. The Keyhole gate is above the chairlift, and you have to hike a bit to get there. I took it once to get to Snowbird. There’s another gate farther down the mountain, but even though I tried to find it once, I was never able to locate it. The runs that go back to the Albion base are all ungroomed and pretty fun. There’s sort of a ridge/jump halfway down that I saw a lot of people jump off of. If you ski too far toward Snowbird without going over, you have to traverse back at the end.

Collins Chair

This was our most ridden chair while we were at Alta. It’s a rapid four-person chair and ascends the most vertical of any chair at Alta. Probably most people coming to Alta will spend the most time on this chair. The top of the chair is on a ridge that extends almost all the way back to the lodge. The traverse along this ridge is called the High Traverse, and it allows skiers to access many runs along the ridge.

If you ski skier’s left of the traverse, there are a series of groomed runs under the chairlift. I spent a lot of time skiing Mambo and Main Street with Lizy. These runs continue to a mid-mountain lodge that also serves as a waystation for the Collins lift. Then you can continue to the next series of groomers: Meadow, Nina’s, and Collins Face.

From the chairlift, you can traverse to a bowl area directly above the groomers. This is called the Ballroom area. There are some runs marked on the trail map, but it’s sort of amorphous, and you can ski sort of any line. I was only able to ski this area once, as it was closed for most of our trip due to avalanche mitigation. Even farther above this bowl area are the Baldy Chutes that start right of the summit of Mount Baldy. To get to the chutes, you have to hike up to the top of Mount Baldy from the top of the Collins chairlift. I think you can also sometimes hike from the other side of the mountain coming from Snowbird, but I’m unsure about that. I was never able to ski there, as it was only open the first day we got to the resort, and I didn’t know it was a rare event, so I delayed doing the hike up.

When you ski along the High Traverse, you can access a number of runs that go west into the gully with Mambo. There are trees planted between the individual runs. The runs have names, but at least for a tourist, it’s hard to distinguish exactly what run you’re on, as there are no signs and the group of them is known as West Rustler. One day on our trip, there was a lot of snow and a lot of wind, and it made it so the wind buffed the runs out as if they had been flattened. I had never skied on a snow surface like that before.

If you ski all the way to the end of the High Traverse, there are a series of runs that fall north, the most famous of which is Alf’s High Rustler, which the locals refer to as High Boy. It’s particularly prominent because it has the longest fall line, it’s consistently steep, and it is noticeably visible from the base of Collins, so all the people waiting in line for the chair and in the lodge can watch you ski.

There are some distinct passageways that let you cut to the east side of the ridge from the High Traverse. The most northerly runs off the ridge run into a section called the Backside Area. Lizy thought this was a weird thing to call it since she thought the name “Backside Area” should be reserved for something on the backside of the mountain, so like it would have to be south-facing. This could’ve been her biggest complaint about Alta. I thought the name was fine, as it was on the side of the ridge not visible from the Collins chairlift, which sort of made sense to me. This area was closed for avalanche mitigation for our entire trip, so I can’t comment on it.

Just to the north of the Backside Area is a single tree-protected run called Gunsight. I talk about this run later in the blog post. Past Gunsight is an open bowl area with a few different ways in that is collectively known as the Greeley Bowl area. It starts off steep but gets pretty flat. From Greeley Bowl, you can either ski over to the Albion base or ski some of the runs off the north side that lead to the transfer tow.

SunnySide Chair

The Sunnyside chair has dual purposes: serving as a lift for the beginner area and conveying people to the mid-mountain pseudo base area around the mid-mountain lodge with Alf’s Restaurant, which is the base for the Supreme and Sugarloaf lifts. We did not ski here very much.

Sugarloaf Chair

The chair goes from the mid-mountain pseudo base area to right underneath the Sugarloaf peak. Right behind the top of the chairlift is a traverse that goes to Snowbird, which is on the backside of Mt. Baldy. You can ski left to a traverse that goes to the top of the Collins chair. Skiing right takes you to a fun set of groomers. If you stay left on the groomers, you get to an ungroomed area with some trees. There’s a traverse at the top of the lift that goes to the Devil’s Castle area, but this was closed for our entire trip for avalanche mitigation, so I can’t speak to it.

Supreme Chair

The Supreme chair was probably our second most ridden chair. There are kind of three main directions you can go from the top. You can either go skier’s left to a series of groomers. One day we went, there was a photographer taking photos of people that you could buy from the lodge.

The second main way you can go is sort of right under the chairlift. It’s cordoned off sort of and is ungroomed. On the map, it’s marked as the Supreme Bowl.

The third option is to go to the Catherine’s Area. There are two ways to get into Catherine’s Area. Either right from the top of the chairlift you go skier’s right and you have to hike up for like six minutes with your skis on your shoulder, then you can get on a traverse that goes over. There’s a second path in where you can go into the Supreme Bowl area, then cut hard right to get to a different traverse, then you have to sidestep up with your skis on to get to a traverse that brings you to Catherine’s Area, but below the other traverse. I think my explanation has been a little confusing. Catherine’s Area is mostly open and ungroomed, and people like going there after big snows because it takes a while to get tracked out because of the difficulty in getting in.

Crossing Over To Snowbird

Lizy and I crossed over to Snowbird together twice, and I went over one more time. I’ll briefly describe these occurrences.

On our second day, we crossed over in the afternoon through the Sugarloaf Pass at the top of the Sugarloaf chair. I asked the lift attendant at the top of the lift on the Snowbird side if I could get a trail map.

“We don’t do paper maps,” he said. “You have to use the app.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“They get wet in your pocket, then it’s garbage.”

“But Alta does paper maps.”

“Well, we’re different.”

Lizy was already annoyed by Snowbird at this point. I think to her, this was like one of those restaurants that instead of giving you a menu sends you a QR code. We did one run. Lizy got annoyed by the snowboarders and thought the snow quality was worse, so we crossed back to Alta after that one run.

“So, it’s like people say Snowbird has worse snow,” said Lizy.

“It was crunchier,” I said, “but that’s just because we went on some south-facing terrain.”

“It’s because it was Snowbird.”

From the one run and the interaction with the lift attendant, I gathered that Snowbird catered to a younger crowd. The old guys at Alta wouldn’t tolerate the switch from paper maps, but it was amenable to the teenagers at Snowbird.

I wanted to do more runs at Snowbird, so later that day I crossed back over to Snowbird via the Keyhole gate that is above the Wildcat lift. I found out the only way to cross back is via the Sugarloaf Pass, so I had to book it as fast as I could up the tram and to the backside. I only did that one run before just making it back through the pass.

I wanted to do more than one run at Snowbird, so I convinced Lizy to take the shuttle with me to start the day at Snowbird on Day 5. That way we’d start on the north-facing terrain in the morning, and we’d be giving Snowbird a fair shot. It was a hard sell, as Lizy already believed that Alta was superior.

We got to the base around 10 am. There was a little bit of fresh snow from the night before, but it had been mostly tracked out by the time we got there. We did some runs on the groomers around the Gad 2 chairlift in the Gad Valley area. The snow was a little choppy since it was previously tracked powder—not Snowbird’s fault—but Lizy kept thinking how much better the snow probably was at Alta. The blue groomers were quite a bit narrower than the runs at Alta, which funneled the skiers closer together. The skiers were quite a bit more out of control at Snowbird compared to Alta. I got nervous when one out-of-control skier whizzed right by me and then almost hit Lizy. Lizy got so freaked out she went into the lodge.

While Lizy was in the lodge, I decided to try skiing a different section. I went over to a traverse that fed into the three Get Serious Chutes. A snowboarder was on his butt skidding down Chute 2, so I traversed further to Chute 3. The chute was mostly exposed rocks with a little bit of snow coverage. There was a rope—to climb down with, I guess. I didn’t want to damage my skis on the rocks, so I took them off and attempted to walk down this part of the chute. On the walk down, I fell because of the steepness and started sliding down the mountain. I would’ve kept sliding for a long time, but I was able to stop myself in the snow with my glove. My skis were sliding behind me, and I was able to catch them. After, I hiked back up part of the chute to get my poles. The rest of the chute had snow but was narrow and steep, so I made use of some jump turns. Then it opened into a patch of untracked snow, which was cool. I got to the base drenched in sweat.

I met back up with Lizy. We skied down mostly traverses to get to the base with the tram.

I was excited to show Lizy the tram. Not many ski resorts have trams, making it a somewhat unusual experience to have. I had ridden in only two other trams. The tram at Palisades, which we had even ridden one time in the summer, and the tram at Heavenly. The Heavenly tram exists just to deal with excess people at the California base, as it runs parallel to a lift and the cabin isn’t very big. The Snowbird tram cabin is massive. It felt like there were hundreds of people in there with us. We were really smooshed together. It has big windows to look around, which is pretty cool, but it’s hard to see sometimes with all the people smooshed together. I think there’s an excitement that comes about from riding up with so many people. Everyone chatting about their next run as we all ascend the mountain together. I wish more ski resorts had them.

At the top of the tram, Snowbird had a lodge on the peak. We walked around the viewing deck to take in the beautiful views. We took a break and sat on the top floor of the lodge right by the window. From the window, we could see Mt. Baldy, Sugarloaf Peak, and the Sugarloaf Pass (the crossing between the resorts). Lizy got a hot chocolate and discovered another strike against Snowbird: there was no whipped cream for the hot chocolate like in the Alta lodges.

We took Chip’s Run, a long winding groomer, just a little ways down the mountain to the entrance of the tunnel. The tunnel has a conveyor belt that takes skiers from the front side of the mountain to the backside/Mineral Basin area. On the walls of the tunnel, there are photos that show interesting moments in Snowbird’s history.

Once we were on the Mineral Basin side, we took one run down, then took the chairlift that goes to the Sugarloaf Pass to go back to Alta. Once at Alta, we took the traverse to the top of Collins. At the top of Collins, I noticed that the Ballroom area was open for the first time since we had arrived, and I was a little peeved I had missed the opening. There was an employee at the trail map, and I asked him where to ski in the Ballroom. He said you could drop in anywhere but recommended skiing down near a patch of trees that he pointed out to me.

“Thanks, I missed it opening this morning because were over at Snowbird this morning,” I said.

“I’m sorry that you had to go to Snowbird,” the Alta employee said.

I wasn’t sure what to say, but didn’t have to think of a response because at that exact moment Lizy caught up to me.

“Thanks,” she said, “It was rough over there.”

“Yeah, I don’t go over there anymore. I used to think it was fine. It was always annoying to have to deal with the snowboarders and the worse snow, but I was fine with it once in a while. But now, with their crazy advertising campaigns and the way they’re running things now—I mean, you guys don’t see this stuff because you’re just visiting, but they’ve really started to rub me the wrong way. I don’t go over there anymore.”

“I’m never going back,” Lizy said.

I skied into the Ballroom bowl area and skied down maybe around Harold’s, according to the trail map. There are no signs out there, so it’s hard to tell for sure. The snow felt incredible. I don’t think I had ever felt snow with this kind of texture before. It wasn’t powder, but it had some powder-like properties. I think you would describe it as wind-buffed snow.

I didn’t want to admit it to Lizy, but I felt like I had missed out on the morning at Alta. Lizy ended up going in for the day, being exhausted from Snowbird, so I kept doing runs on Ballroom. I rode up the lift with a guy from Cincinnati who told me about how great the conditions had been that morning. I told him I had been at Snowbird, and he said, “Sorry you missed all the great snow.”

Snowshoeing

On the fourth day of the trip we decided to take a break from skiing in the afternoon to go on a guided snowshoeing tour. The tour was organized by the Cottonwood Canyon Education Center. Our hotel’s shuttle drove us over to the Albion base where we rented snowshoes and waited for the tour to start.

Our tour guides were Mackenzie, a young rock-climbing enthusiast from California who was a tour leader for REI, and Dave, an older gentleman with a Texas drawl and an enthusiasm for history and geology. Of the people going on the guided snowshoe tour, there was a Jewish woman from St. Louis who was a non-skier being dragged on a ski trip by her family, a woman who wanted a few moments away from her 22-person family trip, a local Salt Lake City father-son pair who talked about hiking the canyon every summer after ski season to see what kind of stuff people had lost on the mountain that year, and more people that I did not take notes for.

Mackenzie and Dave took numerous stops along the tour to discuss the ecology and history of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Dave’s catchphrase was, “It all comes back to geology,” which he would employ after asking a rhetorical question like, “Why are the mountains so much steeper than Vail?”, “Why did Alta become a mining town?”, and “Why does Alta have such good snow?”

We walked up a hill beside the ski area. When we got to the top of the first little hill and just off the trail, we saw a porcupine digging in the snow. I walked over near the porcupine, then went to turn around so Lizy could get a photo of me. I forgot that you can’t walk backwards while wearing snowshoes, and the backs of my snowshoes picked up clumps of snow, throwing me off balance and bringing me crashing into the snow. Lizy’s photo ended up being of the porcupine being startled by my fall.

After walking up a second hill, we stopped to hear Mackenzie talk about the different types of pine trees in the canyon. She passed around needle samples from different types of trees that she had in a ziplock bag she pulled from her pocket. We observed that all the trees at Alta are about the same height, and Mackenzie told us that’s because the whole area was clear-cut when it was being mined, and the trees were only planted once the area became a ski resort, so they were all about the same age. At Alta, unlike at most ski resorts where trees are cut to clear the way for runs, the runs have had trees grow around them. It gives the resort a different feel than pretty much any other ski resort.

On the way back to the lodge I walked down the hill through the fresh snow. It felt fun sinking into the snow wearing the snowshoes.

After we finished snowshoeing we called the lodge to pick us up with the shuttle. They told us it’d take too long to drive over with the after skiing traffic, so we walked back to the hotel beside the rope tow. It was blizzarding while we walked and we were both kind of annoyed, but once we got back to the lodge we saw that the traffic was bumper to bumper and it was probably faster to do what we did.

Meals at the Hotel

Breakfast and dinner were included with our room at the Goldminer’s Daughter. This is a typical setup for the hotels at the base of Alta, as there are no restaurants at the base of the hill. Both the breakfast and dinners were great. For breakfast, they had a buffet as well as dishes made fresh to order, such as omelets, pancakes, and a changing daily special. Lizy usually ordered the blueberry pancakes, but halfway through our trip, she got a tip from a woman in the hot tub that you could order off-menu pancakes with raspberries, and she ordered that once. For dinner, there were three items every day and two rotating specials. The specials were always great.

We went on the trip over Lizy’s birthday. On her birthday I ordered the kitchen to make a little birthday cake for her. The cake ended up being massive and we couldn’t finish the whole thing just the two of us.

On valentines day the staff folded all the napkins into hearts.

Lizy liked sitting at the back of the dining room, so we could look out the window at the ski hill while we were eating. She liked to watch the groomers begin their journey up the mountain especially.

Trying to Find Gunsight

Once you go onto the high traverse there are no signs indicating where specific runs are. There are a couple of gates with signs which are somewhat informative, but the main ways I was able to find specific runs was by following other people, scouting out runs from the chair and then projecting, and looking at the strava trail map on my phone. Gunsight in particular was difficult for me to find. From the Alta trail map Gunsight is on the east side of the high traverse. To it’s south it’s bordered by a dense row of trees that separates it from the backside area, which was closed for our entire stay at Alta and to it’s north there is a sparse row of trees that separates it from High Greely and Greely bowl. The most common runs for people ski are off the west and north of high traverse and Gunsight had sort of an exotic allure to me. It’s harder to get a sense for the east side of the high traverse because from the Collins lift one can see all the runs off of the north side and west side, but not the east side of the high traverse.

The first time I tried to ski Gunsight was in the morning of our sixth day. Lizy and I were skiing over to the Supreme area from the top of Collins. I told her I’d meet her at the chairlift and instead of doing the most direct route with her I hopped on the high traverse to try to find Gunsight. There are two gates to get into the high traverse a low gate and a high gate. I didn’t have the speed to get to the high gate, but I thought that even if I went through the low gate I could get enough speed to cut up to the next high junciton that cut to the east side. I misjudged my speed and ended up down mountain of the gate. I tried to sidestep up for a little bit, but it felt futile, so I just skiied past thinking maybe I could cut over later. I ended up skiing part of Greely bowl, instead. It was still a fun run with some untracked powder, but it wasn’t Gunsight. I also learned that you can’t cut from Greely bowl to Supreme, so I skiied to the bottom of the Sunnyside chair, which I quickly took up to meet Lizy.

The second time, I tried to ski the Gunsight run was later that afternoon. Lizy had gone into the lodge as it had become really windy and was near the end of the day. Because of the the eastern flowing wind, all the tracks in the snow were getting filled in off of west rustler as soon as someone finished skiing it, making for really fun windbuffed skiing, so I was doing laps there, but the allure of Gunsight took me away for a run. This time I took the higher path into the High Traverse and stayed high and got through the high gate that took you to the eastern side of the traverse. I got right behind a young girl and her dad and I followed them up and steep uphill section that we had to sidestep. I thought, if we’re doing all this sidestepping it must be Gunsight at the top or else these people ahead of me wouldn’t be putting in all this work. But of course when I got to the top I saw that the line of trees protecting gunsight was somehow both uphill and south of where I was. I was on High Greely. Still a fun run, but it didn’t seem worth it compared to the wind buffed runs off of west rustler. I ended up skiing out to the tow pull and by the time I got back to the Collins chair I didn’t have enough time to try to find Gunsight again, so I just did one more run down West Rustler before meeting Lizy at the Apres Ski in our hotel.

The third time I tried to find Gunsight was on the seventh and last day we were at Alta. Lizy had gone back to our hotel to hot tub one last time before the shuttle ride to the airport. I didn’t have much time. This time after I went through the high gate to get to the eastern side of the high traverse I followed behind a dad with a posse of kids tagging along. We went up a different uphill section that you had to sidestep. It was even longer than the one I had gone on last time. By the time I got to the top I was already gassed, but this time I was at the top of Gunsight. The entrance was surrounded by rocks. The run was gently concave and the trees on either side of the run kept it in shade, so that the snow was preserved even though it was eastern facing. I finally skiied Gunsight in triumph.

Lizy Buys a Tshirt

On the morning of the sixth day at Alta Lizy saw an advertisement for a groundhog day mechandise sale to support ski patrol. She bought a shirt on the online portal. Right after she bought the t-shirt she begain to second guess her color choice. She didn’t usually doubt her decisions once she made them, but this time she kept going back and forth hoping that the ski patroll would be flexible and let her possibly switch tshirts. We went ot pick up later that afternoon at the ski patrollers cabin at the top of the Collins lift.

The ski patroll cabin was a large space with an office area, a kitchen, and a large sitting area. When we got there three of the ski patrollmen were sitting around the table and one of them was eating soup from a tubberware container. Lizy started perusing their stock of swag that was layed off on a table.

“You know in California the ski patrols sell dog t-shirts with images of their rescue dogs,” said Lizy to the ski patrol guys.

“Well, here at Alta we don’t exploit our dogs more than we already do,” said the oldest and wisest looking ski patroller of the three. No one laughed, but I was pretty sure he was making a wry joke.

The youngest of the three patrollmen got up from the table to help us get our order. Lizy asked if she could swap her t-shirt for a t-shirt with a different color. The man started looking through order details on his clipboard.

“Absolutely not,” the old patrollmen said from the table. Again no one laughed.

“You know you have a way of speaking where it’s impossible to tell if you’re joking or not,” I said.

“It’s taken years of work.”

In the end, Lizy was able to switch t-shirts, but for some reason this decision plagued her with uncertainty that would follow her for the next couple of days, until she forgot about the t-shirt entirely.

Stories From an Instructor

One afternoon after Lizy had already stopped skiing for the day I rode the chair lift with a ski instructor. He told me about the weird day he was having.

“I was teaching a group of children and in the middle of the lesson when we were discussing something on flat ground, a man skied up to us and interupted me to say he thought he was injured. I thought it was a weird thing to be unsure about. I looked at that guy and saw that there was blood gushing out of his nose, so I radioed ski patrol. One of my kids almost threw up from seeing so much blood.

“Then I was riding the rope tow with the kids and one of the kids was so small that he was lifted up into the air by the rope tow. I was looking at one of the other kids and I looked behind me and suddenly I see this kid at least 6 feet off the ground. He holds on – thank god – and comes back down eventually safely.

“It was a weird day.”

“It must be exciting to be an instructor,” I said, “You get to interact with so many different people.”

“It’s mostly good because people are mostly good, but sometimes you end up having to deal with a bad person and it sucks. One time I was taching a girl. It was her firsst time. She had a super good attitude and was a pleasure to be around, but her boyfriend came with her on the lesson and he sucked. He kept saying the whole time that the lesson was boring and that I was teaching her the wrong way. Buddy, I’m the instructor, I wanted to yell at him. But when you’re a ski instructor you can’t yell at clients like that.”

He seemed glad to be able to vent to me.

Last Day

In the morning of our last day Lizy and I mostly stuck to the groomers off of the Collins lift. Lizy’s confidence in her skiing had really improved over the week. During the rest of the trip she felt nervous to go on the black diamonds near the base of Collins, instead she stuck to the blue square Corkscrew, but on the final day Lizy finally tried skiing Nina’s. She skiied it wonderfully making nice big turns. At the bottom she told me that it wasn’t as steep as it had looked from the chair. I told her she had looked great. Since Lizy has switched back to skiing from snowboarding a big part of her relearning skiing has been learning to be confident in her skiing.

She went a little earlier than me to get one last hot tub in. I skiied High Boy a finall time and Gunsight for the first time (which I’ve described elsewhere). Then went into the lodge to meet her. We finally claimed our free pizza from coming in third in the trivia and ate it before taking the shuttle to the airport.

We got to the airport really early because we were worried about getting stuck in traffic, so we found ourselves hanging at the gate for a while. While we were waiting, some people wearing snowbird hats came to the gate and sat in the handicap seats. Lizy pointed them out to me.

“It’s always the Snowbird people,” said Lizy.

“In any group there are a few bad apples.”

“You’ll never see an Alta person sitting in the handicap section. Snowbird isn’t a few bad apples. Snowbird is the rotten apple.”