Another favorite ski spot during our BYU years was Snowbird.  Tyler and I spent lots of time up Little Cottonwood Canyon enjoying the 500 plus inches of annual snowfall.  Springtime was wonderful.  When all the other resorts were shutting down, Snowbird was still going strong - open even for 4th of July weekend during a good year.  But during the winter, when its cold and stormy, there isn't another place on Earth like "the Bird".  

Scott, Tyler, Ryan, and I all enjoyed one last trip to Snowbird on 22 Dec 2006.  Tyler and Brittany's flight to Salt Lake from Cancun was cancelled because of a big storm in Denver, so they rerouted to Las Vegas and rode up with us.  We didn't leave Vegas until after midnight (it was the same night as the Las Vegas bowl where BYU decimated Oregon).  We pretty much drove all night, dropped Brittany and Angela off and picked up Ryan and then met Scott at the resort.  The snow wasn't the greatest, but it was still amazing.  We rode the new Peruvian Express and then took the tunnel to Mineral Basin.  Kind of weird, but fun. Towards the end of the day we even found a good bump run over in Gad Valley.  Down at the bottom of the run, where it started to level out, there was a little floater jump that we hit a few times.  On the last run, I saw what looked like a bigger jump over on the left right alongside the trees.  There was a path leading up to it that was packed out from other skiers.  I decided to check it out and went straight down the last part of the face, gaining lots of speed.  When I got closer to the jump, I realized that it was quite a bit larger than I thought, so I tried to turn out of the track, caught my right tip in the snow, and proceeded to do a superman head-plant.  I didn't even have time to raise my arms up before I drilled myself into the snow.  When I dug myself out my mouth was packed full of snow.  The line between my goggles and my helmet (good thing I had that on) was so packet full of snow that my forehead was burning.  And the weirdest thing was that my jacket was unzipped almost halfway - I guess the force and friction from the impact actually pulled the zipper down so there was an abundance of snow packed in around my neck and shoulders.  Scott, Ryan, and Tyler were all laughing hysterically, then called out to make sure I was ok, then started laughing again.  Too bad we didn't get that one on camera... the picture here to the right is the aftermath.