Sharon and I continued to have a great time around Salt Lake for another
three days.

Saturday we followed Chris Cline's suggestion of looking for backcountry
powder on the ridge between Big Cottonwood and Mill Creek Canyons -- and
found a nice downhill run -- after a moderate pretty approach under another
bright blue sky. Not real deep or light snow, but plenty good enough for us
Easterners, with only two other tracks there before us.

White Pine Touring in Park City was our XC center for Sunday. It's got the
biggest set of gentle trails we've found there so far, and another sunny
pleasant day. Then we went down to the hillier Farm area, and Sharon took
lots of videos of me climbing the first big hill on the loop. After that I
inflicted some pain on myself doing repeats of the Junior Team trail.
Overall the strongest skating I've ever done.

We slipped in another hour at Mountain Dell before we drove to the airport
and flew home in the evening. My first lap I got behind a slower but solid
skater, and got some more excellent practice on how to skate _slow_ up the
hills. Second lap I allowed another skater to gradually leave me behind. I
was also working on fixing some things I saw in the yesterday's videos. And
it was working -- my best day of controlled-pace skating ever.

I could have stayed another couple of days, but without any fresh snow in
the backcountry, I decided to go home with Sharon. Then I was rewarded by
new snow at home -- pleasant ungroomed skating in our local city park, under
_bright_ sunshine (unlike the city parks of the Salt Lake City valley).

Alta -- Someone pointed out to me by private Email that the designated
_cross_country_ trails at Alta are _not_ the ones I was on, and the real XC
ski trails there are much gentler than I described.

Ken