Utah skier eagerly takes up gauntlet

It was an article in the Denver Post that started the engines.

Ray Grass, our longtime outdoor editor here at the DMN, was reading the Post last month when he came across a story written by their ski writer, John Meyer, about a one-day odyssey Meyer took, skiing at eight different Colorado resorts over a 10-hour period.

This thought popped into Ray's brain: In Utah, we could do eight resorts before breakfast. Or lunch, if we took our time.

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In a move certain to warm the competitive heart of our new governor, Ray picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Meyer, even if Meyer was unaware he'd thrown it down, and this past Tuesday, on a slightly overcast January morning, set out to make history.

In nine hours and 41 minutes, Ray skied every resort along the Wasatch Front and Back — 11 of them in all, from Sundance to Powder Mountain, with Deer Valley, Park City, The Canyons, Solitude, Brighton, Snowbird, Alta, Snowbasin and Nordic Valley in between.

The only Utah resorts he missed were Brian Head in the extreme south and Beaver Mountain in the extreme north.

He wanted to save something for next year.

It is not known for sure if anyone has ever skied the 11 Wasatch resorts in a single day, but probably not, largely because the grand total for day passes comes to $547.

Ray got around that problem when the people at Ski Utah, the organization that publicizes Utah skiing and snowboarding, heard about the idea and asked to come along. The prospect of one-upping Colorado Ski Country USA was way too tempting.

Nathan Rafferty, Ski Utah's director of communications, not only made arrangements for passes at the 11 resorts, but also supplied the single most important ingredient if you want to ski all of them in just one day: a van.

The van came equipped with a driver, a former river runner named Adam Barker, also of Ski Utah, who brought along his modest collection of approximately 5,000 CDs, everything from AC/DC to the Dixie Chicks.

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Ray invited me along so I could, as he put it, "finally be a part of something historic." I said OK because who in his right mind is going to turn down a road trip and ski trip all in one, especially when it includes the opportunity to keep yet-to-host-an-Olympics Colorado humble?