Category Archives: Scene

Wasatch Pass Wars

One thing is for sure. Vail Resorts and their move on Canyons Resort this summer has shaken up the way the Wasatch does business.

Not only is the new Epic Pass one of the cheapest season passes in the state (Powder Mountain’s is $640) but it’s causing a backlash of resort-gangup warfare.

Step aside Mountain Collective, the “Best Benefit In The Wasatch” is a boon for Utah locals. Buy a full-tier pass at Alta Ski Area, Deer Valley Resort, Park City Mountain Resort, or Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort (basically any resort but Canyons, Solitude and Brighton) and receive three free days at each of the other three resorts. Even better, if you purchase a pass at Alta or Snowbird you get the benefits of the Mountain Collective as well (minus the free tickets)!!!

In other words, if you buy an Alta pass for $999, you’ll get three extra days at Deer Valley ($324), PCMR ($300), Snowbird ($267). That’s an $800+ value! Plus you get most of the Mountain Collective which would be 50 percent off lift tickets at Aspen, Jackson Hole, Mammoth, Whistler, Squaw/Alpine, Durango, Red Lodge Mountain, Homewood, and Wachusett throughout the season. 

“As another step in adding value and variety for our Alta skiers, we think it is great to be able to add days of skiing at three of our fine neighboring resorts – Snowbird, Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort,” commented Alta Ski Area’s President and General Manager, Onno Wieringa.

Here’s the condensed rundown of pre-season pass prices for comparision:

Alta:
Adult Season Pass = $999 until 10/1

Alta/Snowbird:
AltaSnowbird Adult = $1499 till Aug. 24 ($1699 after)

The Mountain Collective:
With the purchase of the Mountain Collective Pass each passholder receives 2 days at each of the following areas: AltaSnowbird, Aspen/Snowmass, Jackson Hole, Mammoth, Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows, and Whistler Blackcomb. Additional benefits include half off ski days at The Collective destinations, no blackout dates and up to 25% discount on lodging at The Collective destinations.


Beaver Mountain:
Adult Season Pass (12 & Over) = $465 until 8/15


Brian Head:
Adult Season Pass (26-61) = $539 until 11/7

Brighton:

Adult Season Pass NA yet

Solitude:

Adult Season Pass (26-61) = $999 until 11/1

For the first time ever, Solitude and Brighton have teamed up to offer a joint BCC pass for $999 (the price of a Solitude pass alone); on sale Aug. 8. “We recognize that the paying customer has a plethora of ski pass choices this year. We think you will find that our pass offerings this year are competitive and hope that you choose to keep Solitude as your mountain choice this year,” announced Solitude on Facebook.

Canyons:
Adult Epic Pass = $689
Epic Pass: Unlimited skiing or riding at Canyons, Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Keystone, Heavenly, Northstar, Kirkwood, Arapahoe Basin and Eldora. – NO BLACKOUTS.  Also includes 5 free days at Verbier, Switzerland and 5 free consecutive days at Arlberg, Austria.

Deer Valley:
Adult Season Pass (24-64) = $1,910 until 10/31
Senior Season Pass (65-71) = $980 until 10/31


Park City Mountain Resort:
College Season Pass (18-24) = $490 until 9/15
Adult Season Pass (25-64) = $780 until 9/15

Powder Mountain:  
Adult Season Pass = $640
First Time Season Pass = $395


Snowbasin:
Adult Premier Season Pass (27-64) = $689 until 9/2

** NEW  Powder Alliance:
Three free days any Sunday-Friday (excludes holidays) at Angle Fire Resort, Arizona Snowbowl, Bridger Bowl, China Peak Crested Butte, Mountain High, Mt. Hood Skibowl, Schweitzer, Sierra-At-Tahoe, Snowbasin, Stevens Pass and Timberline with the purchase of a top-tier, anytime season pass at one of the 12 Powder Alliance Member resorts.

Wolf Mountain Family Passes:
Family (2 Adults & 2 Children living in the same household) = $638
Individual = $255
Student (Full-time student, K thru Graduate Level, 12+ credit hours) = $195


OR Demo Day; Let The Games Begin!

It did not start off well. The organizers of the Outdoor Retailer Show– the largest industry expo of outdoors products in the country- posted the wrong address for today. So not only did I rise late for the 8 a.m. kick off but I wound up on the wrong side of Pineview Reservoir near Ogden. The nice lady at the kiosk shook her head and said I wasn’t alone.

The outdoor demo is the official kick-off for the Show and a unique opportunity to test the latest paddle, camping, GPS, fishing, GPS/geocaching, hiking, and trail running gear from more than 100 manufacturers.

I got to the Demo Day site by noon and for the first time I can remember I did NOT do the Magellan GPS Scavenger Hunt. The geocaching event has long been a favorite and pretty much the only time in a year where I play with a GPS. Instead, I took in the sights, the gear and the waves on the lake.

My first stop was Skechers to try out a pair of their new GOwalk 2. The lightweight, mesh slip on not only uses their VStride technology to promote a walking step and multi-direction traction on the sole for stability but the breathable upper and midsole cush made it a killer transitional shoe to take from the sand to the water.

Aquapac shared info on their new waterproof duffle and backpack. I especially liked that the backpack looked more like a pack than a drybag.


This handy tool was an emergency cutter. But if you were going to carry it around, why not just take your Buck knife?

PowerBar is introducing a new line of performance energy blend gels like strawberry, apple, mango. They looked tasty but Sage would rather suck on a ginormous snowcone from the Olukai Sandals booth to promote their Shaved Ice collection.

Did you know you can use the insect repellent wipes on your dog to keep fleas and flies away?

Now here was my favorite gadget of the day. The Waka Waka is a pocket-sized, solar powered light that will also charge your phone or Mp3. It has a built-in stand with a center hole so you can hang it from your tent ceiling, set it on a desk or sit it on a water bottle. Waka Waka’s Victor Brandstetter told me that for every sale of the unit the company gives another to an impoverished child or family so students can study at night and have a better chance in school.

Last year, I didn’t get on the water. This year, I SUPed my buns off.


Yes, that’s Laird Hamilton on his signature SUP.


And this is my 6 year old on LuckyBum‘s kids SUP.


Stand-Up Paddleboards are to the summer outdoor industry what snowboards were to the ski industry back in the 90s. Everybody and their frat brothers are making them. One day the little guy will drop off or get swallowed up by the bigger companies but not today; not this year.

Local Foods Bring Old World Touch To Northern Utah

It makes sense when you think about it. A town has to explode in population before those mean old fast-food joints and giant, big box stores invade every nook and cranny, pushing out the mom and pop establishments. We’re lucky that there are still smaller communities in the Cache Valley and Box Elder County like Logan and Brigham City  that have been able to stay true to their roots, with their hearts and hands solidly planted in a wholesome, organic, simple, agricultural existence. Take a day and head north for a food lovers tour of this charming area.

Caffe Ibis Coffee

Start your day in Logan with a bold cup of Highland Grog or Logan Canon Trail at the family owned Caffe Ibis. The artisan custom coffee roasting house has been around since 1976 where it has evolved into serving Triple Certified, Organic, Fair Trade, and Smithsonian Shade Grown “Bird-Friendly” Arabica beans. Those seals mean the coffee is grown without chemical herbicides, pesticides, and artificial fertilizers or with minimal inputs. Their hot breakfasts are as good as their coffee. You can find whole beans at places like Whole Foods in Park City if you don’t feel up to the 2-hour road trip.


Crumb Brothers

We couldn’t leave Logan, Utah, without a loaf. If it’s the Sabbath. How about Challah? The name Crumb Brothers may not be widely known throughout the state but if you’ve savored the bread at the New Yorker or the Pub at Trolley Square you’ve tasted their fare. The artisan bakery is not just another place that overuses the term. No, ‘artisan’ adeptly applies to the 1000-1500 loaves John Reichert and his crew craft in their eco-friendly bakery charged with a geothermal heating and cooling system and surrounded outdoors with native plants.


Each day, nine to 12 different types of loaves are baked from ciabatta to polenta Jack and served in their front end café. Call for a tour for a behind the scenes look at bread making. (If only it was a hands-on tour.) The loaves are also sold wholesale to markets like Whole Foods and taken to seasonal farmers’ markets.


Brigham City Fruit Way

Who needs a farmers market when you have a fruit highway? Stand after stand of locally grown fruits and vegetables are on sale daily from May to November along Highway 89 between Willard and Brigham City. Ten miles of peaches, plums, apricots, tomatoes, snap beans, zucchini and more are hand-picked by local farmers and friends from the 30-plus farms in the area. There are even U-Pick ’em places if you don’t want strangers touching your goods.


Make sure you grab a fresh shake blended with chunks of your favorite fruits from Pettingill’s when the heat starts to bear down.

The Honey Jar Honey

They say necessity is the mother of invention. So when little Kyle Nanno was cruising back from Colorado with his family he noticed there was no place in Utah to buy raw honey. Eight years later the 25-year-old’s The Honey Jar is winning raves throughout the state.


Unlike pasteurized, filtered honey, The Honey Jar’s honey is as fresh as the day they squeezed it from the honeycombs in his own bee hives; filled with enzymes, pollen, anti-oxidants and yeast to promote healthy digestion. Rumor has it that a teaspoon of raw honey a day keeps the allergies away. Try the lavender, clover, dandelion or raspberry honey for added flavor and nutrition.


The Spirit Goat

You can’t eat these luscious dollops of soap art but they sure smell delicious. Becky Yeagar moved her Logan home business to a small shop near Main Street so even more people could enjoy her goat’s milk creations. But the former chemist mainstay is still primarily internet orders and wholesale.


When skin is too sensitive for regular harsh soaps you just might appreciate the lavish indulgence of vitamins, minerals, proteins, and alpha-hydroxy acids found in Yeagar’s goat’s milk and shea butter creations like Utah Mountain Meadow, Logan Canyon Backcountry, and Bear Lake Raspberries.

Idle Isle Chocolates

Idle Isle’s been making delicious handmade candies since 1921 and while the digs look like they could use a serious facelift, they better not dare fiddle with the nibbles.


Rock candy, chocolates, and fudge are all decadent and worth every calorie. Locals will recommend the Almond Toffee Cremes with their perfectly round soft butter-cream centers. Trust the locals.

Peach City Ice Cream Co.

The 50s diner on Main is your cliché greasy spoon. Mini jukeboxes in the booths, dingy flooring and open kitchen for generating the usual fare of burgers and sandwiches. Get an order of hand-cut fries and toss them back with a hand-made peach shake. Their ice cream is made on site so even if the atmosphere is stale, the treats aren’t.

OR Demo Moves Back To Pineview

Let’s hope it’s only temporary but the super fun Outdoor Retailer Demo day scheduled for July 30 is bailing on Jordanelle Reservoir and heading back to Pineview Reservoir near Snowbasin. Can I just say that I hate that drive. It was nice having the kickoff event for the biggest summer gear geekshow in the country in my backyard. Sigh.

“Due to poor/unusable water levels, the location of the 2013 Open Air Demo has changed,” the press release reads. Apparently, the Jordanelle is at less than 68 percent capacity and dropping an average of one percent per week due to evaporation. For those other than OR attendees, there is still plenty of water for boating, swimming, SUPing and jetskiing.

The biggest concern is drought. Again. Park City’s reservoirs are wasting away after the second straight year of weak snowfall.

Storage levels last fall (2012) at East Canyon, Echo and Rockport reservoirs saw their lowest levels in a decade and even with last week’s rain there’s little chance for recovery this summer.

The Jordanelle is east of Park City and collects water from the Provo River. Last winter it hit its lowest mark since it was filled in the mid 1990s. Pretty sure we’ll break that record this year.


Morshower in Salt Lake Pt 2

I went to an audition last week with a McDonald’s French fry behind my ear. I got a callback. Is this a fluke or is Glenn Morshower onto something?

So much of what Morshower said in his Salt Lake City workshop is still ringing between my ears. The evening was more self-help than acting. We came for audition tips and techniques and left considering where exactly the bologna would fit in our pants. Literally and figuratively.

His raves took a multitude of tangents but the message grounded back to the same epitaph. Believe in yourself and your talent and you will succeed. Is this the actor’s version of The Secret? “I’m going to will 2013 to be the best financial year ever,” he says. “Now, hoist the boat and see your problem. You have a collection of rust and barnacles. You can’t will anything if you’re clogged with belief systems that don’t work.”

Fixing the problem is not cosmetic. Remember the sperm analogy? Glenn asks us to look in the mirror and tell ourselves- ‘I’m a winner.’ It’s not about your talent. Talent is the seventh most important quality for an actor, he says. It’s not #3 or #4. We all swim in a pool with those gifted in being “real.” What we do is not impressive; it’s just what we do- like a football player that tackles. It’s what he does. The impressive part is what we bring into the room with us. That is, if we’re emotionally healthy.

“Your life is a boat that needs to get up out of the water so you can see what’s going on with it. Don’t grotesquely underlive your life,” Glenn vocalizes as he paces from side to side in the auditorium at Broadview U.

He suddenly starts to makes a Richard Nixon shadow puppet on the wall behind him. Is this a grown man with too much time on his hands? Or someone who knows how to not to take himself too seriously.

“Experience another day?” Glenn says, “No, experience a new day. Quit having sex every Saturday at 4. Do something to mix it up. Don’t get into a place where people can anticipate your next move. Find a way to be in the now. Be new; be in the present. And stop trying to prove yourself.” That’s a lot to take in for one evening.

The reason actors don’t work is because of the “unhealed shit underneath” he reasons. The barnacles. Those actors arrive at a casting session for validation. They want to earn good opinions of themselves. The thought is that if you get hired you become a person of worth. “You are a person of worth the minute you open your eyes,” Glenn says and it’s like he’s reached out and stroked your head for comfort. I see people tearing up!

Does everyone in here have a lousy opinion of themselves deep down?

Apparently, the average artist was not raised in a happy, healthy well-adjusted home. If we were,does that mean we wouldn’t want to be actors? Hmmm. My home life as a kid certainly wasn’t a picnic but we were relatively happy, clean and overeducated- I’ve got three degrees including a Masters from USC and a JD from the University of Utah. I had dogs, cats, birds and Mercedes Gullwing to sneak out of the garage when the rents were out (which they were quite often). Oh yeah, and there was that thing about refusing to let me audition or be in plays because it meant them having to “chauffeur” me everywhere. So, yeah, my potential was squashed on a regular basis. But that’s the past and I’m doing something about it now…in a huge way.

Glenn talks about a childhood filled with parental addiction and abuse but refers to that as if he’s learned how NOT to live. You can choose to be defined by the shit in your life or you can choose to swear it off. “Why poison relationships with whatever your thing is? Life is acting in our own movie. Why would you cast yourself as the shitty father, the smoking dude, the drinker, the cheater?” Get over it, is the bottomline.

He practices gratitude daily. “I wake up and say ‘thanks’ for another day.”

“You get into a whole new groove when you access a new tone or modality,” he says. “Boost your level of compassion. We are all creatures of our environment. There’s no point in going to war with a guy who’s being an ass. He’s always going to be like that. Time is our greatest gift. Are you going to waste it on that guy? You won’t get it back.” We all nod. Later, I decide to walk away from a total ass just moments after our workshop. There might be something to this.

Glenn finally jumps to some actual acting tips and I get excited: Know who the character is and where they come from. Have a backstory. Give them legs, tasetbuds, know your lines, be in the parking lot a half hour before the audition. But above all, HAVE FUN. This is a lesson Jim teaches weekly in his class. If you believe you are enough you can step back and just enjoy the moment. Whether it’s on a rollercoaster or in a casting session. He gave examples of punked-ish pranks he pulled that helped nurture his fun side. Like pretending to return milk to an Autozone. This was part of listening to your inner ‘whisper’.

After several years of meetings, Glenn heard a “whisper”  in him. Something (his gut?) was telling him to mix things up. He walked into the next casting session with syrup in his shoes. No one else could see or know what was going on between his toes but the squishy feeling gave him a little secret. “Maybe you don’t put syrup in your shoes or bologna in your pants but do something that day if you have a ‘meeting’ to keep that joy lingering,” he explains. Of course, do your homework so you know the part but then do something that you have never done before so when you walk in, these people are meeting someone who’s “free.”

What are you thinking? What are your thoughts? Come in with the right attitude. The façade, the bullshit; that’s the hitch in your giddyup. Telling yourself that a casting director will never like you becomes what Glenn recently coined as the “milk in the margarita”. I.e. milk screws up a perfectly delicious marg. I’ll go further and say add a little habanera instead. Or maybe a French fry.

1 42 43 44 45 46 61