Weekly Newsletter: February 10th-17th, 2025

Utah is finally getting some snow! 🏔️ This week, we pre-celebrated Valentine's Day. We also took advantage of the long Presidents' Day weekend with some much-needed time on the slopes. 🎿

Check out our new posts and videos 🆕 🎥 📝

Lodging on the Camino: From Hostels to Hotels

Keith and I enjoyed the various and inexpensive options for lodging along the Camino de Santiago. Each night was a little different and offered different amenities.

Keith and LindseyLindsey Huster

Winter weather is here! ❄️ 🏔️

Utah has been extremely dry this winter. 😔 We went from two, back-to-back record breaking seasons of snowfall to one of the lowest snowfall seasons that we have seen since moving to Utah. As of writing this newsletter, Snowbird has only received ~300 inches (762 centimeters) of snowfall so far this season. This is on track to reach the annual average of ~500 inches (1,270 centimeters) but we don't expect much more than that.

The low snowfall has made skiing less fun and more dangerous than prior years. At Snowbird, we typically consider a 100 inch (254 centimeter) base to be the bare minimum for safely skiing the majority of the resort's more difficult terrain. Up to this point, the base has been hovering around 60 inches (152 centimeters) which means there are lots of "sharks" (i.e. rocks) hidden just underneath the snow.

Thankfully, a recent round of significant snowstorms have dumped several feet of snow in the Cottonwoods. This has finally raised the base to just over 100 inches (254 centimeters) 🥳.

Valentine's Day Donuts ❤️ 🍩

Happy Valentine's Day! 💘 We haven't yet celebrated Valentine's Day together due to Lindsey not feeling too well and Keith needing to work late on Valentine's Day to support his company's products. We have plans to go out in the next couple of weeks to celebrate together. Lindsey did surprise Keith with some delicious Krispy Kreme donuts though!

Epic powder days at Snowbird ❄️ 😄

The recent storm cycle that I mentioned earlier in this newsletter led to some seriously epic powder days! The storms hit hard on Friday so we knew that the canyon traffic would be a nightmare. Keith was off work on the following Monday for Presidents' Day so we decided to skip skiing on Saturday in favor of skiing both Sunday and Monday. This plan paid off in so many ways!

We did miss some great powder on Saturday. However, we weren't too upset... One of our friends that did head up on Saturday had to line up in their car at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon at 5:45 AM!!! That's nearly 4 hours before the canyon road opened up from the morning avalanche mitigation work. We have both spent many hours waiting in the canyon queue which can be both frustrating while waiting and nerve wracking once everyone starts the mad rush up the canyon. So, we have decided that sometimes it's just not worth it and it is better to find other things to do that day.

Sunday and Monday were fantastic though. The storms continued throughout the weekend so we were blessed with plenty of refills and nearly fresh tracks for most of the mornings. Keith and his friends found some excellent, untouched runs off Snowbird's Cirque Traverse. Keith even took some vacationers over to the Cirque and their minds were blown 🤯 from the amazing run in Utah's deep powder.

Preparing for upcoming visitors ✈️ 🧳

We are excited to catch up with some of our family and friends that we haven't seen in a while. Over the next few weeks, we have multiple visitors arriving and Lindsey has been busy planning for each visit.

First up, we have our friends Chris and Doug returning for a long weekend of skiing at Snowbird. This will be our five year anniversary of becoming friends through, of all things, our YouTube channel. We plan to ski with Chris and Doug on both Saturday and Sunday. We can't wait to let the jackassery begin!!! 🫏

Next, we have Lindsey's cousin Brooke and her fiance visiting us while on their ski vacation to Utah. Brooke last visited us with her family a few years ago. They will be staying with us for a couple nights and we hope to all get to ski together at least once during their trip.

Finally, we have Lindsey's cousin Cara coming to spend a week with us. It's been several years since Cara last visited so we are excited to catch up with her. Lindsey and Cara are both serious planners so I am sure that there will be a fully planned itinerary for her stay. 🤓

Upcoming posts and videos 👷‍ 👷‍♀️️

Lindsey is continuing her work on the post series from our three-week adventure along the Camino De Santiago, Portuguese Route! Those posts are being published as she has time. We also have several prior trips that we haven't yet shared, so be sure to subscribe to our blog if you haven't done so already.

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletters. Winter is in full swing, how are you spending your winter season? Let us know in the comments section below.👇 💬