Riding Utah Resorts Alone

I'll be there next week Thurs.- Tues.(24-29) and riding for two of the days.  I have been riding since '98 15+ days a year and this will be my first time anywhere out west and will also be my first time riding alone.     I'm staying in Layton with family.  Would love to try Powder Mountain one of the two days.  I love combination of some fresh pow and vast terrain, but is that the kind of place where I might get lost and die if I ride alone outside of the groomers?  How about Canyons, Snowbasin, Brighton?  I ride mostly in Northeast PA with a couple trips to VT every year.  I'm looking for some freshy,  open glades, bowls, and long runs.  Basically, I just want to experience something different than what I'm used to on the East Coast.   

By the way, if someone wants to be my tour guide I'll pay for their lift ticket that day. 

I think you're in luck...supposed to be a ton of snow moving in this whole week.  That much pow (could be a couple feet deep) can be really dangerous, though.  Definitely hit the glades if you have the knowledge and equipment to ride those depths

...if you can't bribe anyone to ride with you, make quick friends on the lifts or just keep an eye out for strangers heading into the pow and ride with them (that's what I do) 

I really don't understand all these posts about people being scared to go alone.

ddeloplaine just check the resort websites for the most accurate forecasts. I would use the national weather service for the most accurate weather.
Don't be so worried it will be a lot of fun if you feel like you don't know where your going follow others to get to the bottom of a run. It's not like your going to get lost the runs are pretty easy to follow even at the biggest resorts. Plus you can get a map at any ticket office and map out your runs on the way up the lift.
If you want long runs you won't find anything longer than the canyons it's huge. Snowbasin is near ogden and I think that's kind of a long drive from Layton.
If I were you I would spend a day like at the canyons and maybe another day at brighton or snowbird. Brighton has some pretty mellow terrein and some steeps also. Snowbird is all steeps.
good luck and have fun dude

Originally posted by SLUSHIE I really don't understand all these posts about people being scared to go alone. Just get a map and you'll be fine.

Probably all the bullshit about people dying in tree wells...geez, can't people avoid a tree? </sarcasm>

Snowbasin is sick.  Tons of wide open groomers.  Powder mountain is more un-groomed natural terrain and backcountry.  Snowbaisin is also closer to layton than powmow. 

Originally posted by ddeloplaine Nice!  I'm started to get pre-trip anxiety.  The two things I was worried about were 1.) riding alone and  2.) the weather.   Piranha, where do you get your weather report from?  I've been checking a couple sites for the past few days but I'm not sure if any of them are accurate or not.

I'm in CA (never even been to utah), but utah always gets the same storms we do...just a couple days later.

you're right, though, riding in deep powder is not something to take as lightly as some on here do (if they've actually ever ridden in 2 ft+ pow).  You can very easily beef, launching head first and get stuck. 

Couple of weeks ago, I was in the advanced glades, simply lost my balance and fell over next to a tree.  While trying to work myself out, my board sank tail first even deeper into the snow.  I was up to my thighs in snow, but it got so tightly packed around my legs, I had a difficult time just digging the front leg out.  After about 15 min more, I was sure I wasn't going to be able to get to my rear binding...but I finally did. 

This was on a sunday, so I coulda kept yelling and someone woulda eventually heard me.  I didn't even bother riding that area the next day because there just wasn't enough people there.

I've got stuck upside-down between trees on a pow day in Stowe and could not get out myself.  My board was stuck on the trees branches.  Luckily my buddy was only a couple hundred feet behind me to help me get un-tangled.   I'm not sure what would have happened if I was alone that day, but it was enough to scare me. 

i think you'll be ok. there's not a lot of places where people don't go at resorts, and i think you'll be able to find the powder and tree runs you want with out going out of bounds or into the backcountry.