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Show Area Review Shows Much To Do by Joe Borecki To' the skier driving east from! California, the Wasatch Wa-satch is the first island oasis ; of snow away from the Sier- j ra Sunday lift line chatter; and to the skier 'flying from i New York, New England or the Great Lakes states, Salt Lake: City is the next hop fronv the Grand Junction gateway to Colorado. With Thanksgiving only a few weeks away, newcomers newcom-ers look at the barren slopes and bonder when the snow will come. "Do'n't worry," grumbles an oldtimer tightening down bolts ;on the lift towers. "Once' it starts, it never stops!" And; he is right, for the Wasatch contains one of the world's most invincible, renown re-nown triumverates of skiing; Alta, 'Snowbird and Park City. ' Each area is unique. Park City has its own old atmosphere of the Victorian West; Snowbird is super space-age, ana A it a is charming as a tiny Swiss mountain village. At the same time Park City has experienced a booming, building off-season, the finishing fin-ishing touches have been added to summer projects in Little Cottonwood Canyon. At Snowbird, the scaffolding scaffold-ing is coming away from the new Lodge Four at Snowbird, revealing a concrete, hi-rise structure of prismatic angles set against Mount Superior and Hellgate Cliffs. Lodge Four is a condominium condomin-ium complex whose units are being sold on an innovative in-novative time-sharing basis to owner groups. Another change at Snowbird Snow-bird has taken place in Ye Olde Cracked Egg Lounge, a popular restaurant featuring featur-ing omelettes. This year, the Cracked Egg has undergone expansion to match the increased in-creased lodging capacity. Up at the end of the Canyon, Can-yon, new things abound at Alta. Snowpine Lodge, longpop-ular longpop-ular as a lunch spot for day skiers and a small, family-style family-style lodge for Alta visitors has a new, instructional, ' cross-country program in the offing. Put together by lodge owner Jeanne Kapp and touring instructor Bruce Bergstrom, the program will feature classes for novice and intermediate crosscountry cross-country skiers, and offer picnic tours between Alta and Brighton. Rustler Lodge will offer their guests a new, heated outdoor swimming pool this winter, and in combination with their saunas, relaxation - after a day's skiing will be . a key feature. Following last winter's devastating avalanches, Alta Lodge has rebuilt their entrance en-trance ramp completely. The new construction features steel and cedar and plexiglass plexi-glass panels, and the new entrance offers better ac-cessability ac-cessability both to the lodge' and the slopes. The major change at Alta this year is the newRampton Road. Formerly known as the by-pass road, it was. paved this summer and runs along the south rim of the Canyon past Snowbird, making Alta accessible in times of heavy snowfall and extreme avalanche av-alanche danger. Last winter saw State Route 210 closed for many days after slides from Mount Superior left fifty to seventy feet of snow on the main road into Alta. |