Brighton Bests Utah (Magic Uta Pow)

In this installment of the SeenTK show, Brighton was heavily featured, with it's sick steeps and surprisingly abundant snow pack.

After another trek into the Big Cottonwood Canyon, two boloners headed off for their final day of riding during U2.  Brighton is a place we were all blown away by last year, and we were both psyched to head back.  Knowing the snow out here isn't epic this week, we figured Brighton wouldn't be as good as last year, but little did we know.

At first after a run up the Great Eastern Express, not to be confused with the Great Northern mud trail of killy, we thought we were in for it.  The run under the lift and through the trails was icy and brutal.  With a changed game plan, we moved farther right onto the hill and hit up the Morning Wood trees.  Ah, the Brighton we remembered returned.  Steep and snowy trees that seemed untouched even though they lacked fresh snow in two weeks.  Rock drops, quick pow slashes, and terrifying steeps as far as our legs allowed us to go.  

After several laps through there, we again moved on to greener pastures.  This time, the Miley Cyrus express.  The whole Miley "bowl" if that's even the right term, is a super craggy, steep, and gnarly area with acre upon acre of freeride terrain.  

This was the real shock of Brighton.  What we, well, at least I, thought would have been crusted over death steeps with gnarly exposure, turned out to be very edgeable snow, making for the best runs of the trip.  Under the lift things looked rocked out and danger slick, but with Tim's enthusiasm we shot through lines that I thought wouldn't be doable with the snow there.  Sure, I might have made some interesting rock slides, but skis and boards survived - as well as my joints and limbs - and the Miley zone was great.

Final mission of the day was the devastator itself:  Rein's Run.  In the morning that area was brutally hard and crusty.  Something that steep is basically not didable in those conditions, but we had to see if it was as steep as remembered.  Short answer, yes, nutso steep.  In the final surprise of the day, the snow was perfect.  Four or five turns and already dropping several hundred feet, snow sprayed up on every turn and the rocks were well covered.  So good in fact we lapped it three times and as we descended lower to the Snake Express (or whatever it's called) we found plenty of little drops and surprise steeps.

Brighton has got to be one of the best hills in the world, and we were both psyched to take the bus through the Big Canyon and hit it up again.