9:19 a.m. — We walked from the unloading area at the Marriott Hotel in the Resort Center to the Payday Lift, one of the resort's two high-speed, six-passenger lifts, for a quick ride to the Payday Run, one of Utah's more famous runs made so by the length, wide open skiing between treelines and the fact that this is an ideal slope for cruising. All of which made this one of our quickest runs — top to bottom, 1,340 vertical feet, in four minutes.

9:35 a.m. — Met the van in the lower parking area and headed for The Canyons.

9:45 a.m. — Arrived and met Katie Eldridge, communications director, for a brief chat and a few video takes on our progress for posterity.

Here, we took the last remaining lift from the old ParkWest days, Eagle Express, which took us to one of our favorite runs — Doc's.

This, too, would have been one of our faster runs had there not been so many photo ops along the way.

10:16 a.m. — At this point, as we drove from The Canyons' parking area, we were roughly 20 minutes ahead of Rafferty's timetable.

11:04 a.m. — Arrived in the lower parking area at Solitude and met up with Jay Burke, marketing director, who led us to the Eagle Express, one of the first high-speed quads to be built in Utah, and access to one of the resort's more popular runs — Olympia to Post Card — and the waiting van.

11:30 a.m. — Headed for Brighton.

11:36 a.m. — Arrived at the base of Millicent lift at Brighton, one of the earliest runs at the resort and now holding one of the longest lifts to this point, and a run that included Backbone, Chute 2 and the series of very enjoyable rollers along Perris Bowl. This was our fastest run, taking the 1,500 vertical feet in just under 4 1/2 minutes.

11:54 a.m. — Loaded up and headed for Snowbird. At this point we were 46 minutes ahead of schedule, which meant we were able to take the tram at Snowbird rather than one of the lower lifts.

12:32 p.m. — Met Dave Fields, public relations director at Snowbird, gave a quick report on our progress and then headed up the tram, the full 2,866 vertical feet, the most of any of the lifts we took, to the top of Hidden Peak in roughly eight minutes.