We’re into the Christmas holiday season and ski conditions are awful. What is open is actually pretty good, with ample coverage and relatively soft snow. There just isn’t much of it.  I’ve skied a fair amount, sometimes lasting as long as two hours, and have had fun. But there’s ver y little open. Deer Valley has had Success and Birdseye open, and managed to get Nabob midweek. Other runs look almost ready, but the rain isn’t going to help. The skier density on the open runs has been terrifying at times, with beginner skiers and race training programs on the open run. The racers used the beginners as slalom gates.  When it got like that, my group started doing laps off Homestake. For the first time in over 50 years, I don’t have a pass at Park City Mountain, but the reports from there are even worse. I don’t know if more will get opened for the weekend or not. The problem, of course, is that winter has not arrived on schedule. It’s too warm to make snow, the rain is melting what little they have made, and there’s not a darn thing anybody can do about it.  This is the worst opening I can remember, and I’ve been skiing here since 1963. Well, I take that back. There was a year in the mid 1970s when nothing was open at all until early January. The resort completely missed Christmas. They got serious about installing snowmaking the following summer. A whole bunch of Main Street businesses, which was really a mom-and-pop affair back then, didn’t survive. I’m not sure what happens to the employees who thought they would be working on the mountain by now. With so little open, there are lift operators, groomers, mechanics, food service, ski instructors and others who are standing around waiting.  That doesn’t pay much.  At some point, they starve out and go home, and those who stick around are really scraping by until more gets going. Donate to the food bank — there’s a lot of need this year. The mountain operations people at Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain have made a heroic effort, and the available skiing has been fun for a couple of hours. But there are limits to the number of laps you a do off Viking in a day. Unless everybody leaves their refrigerator doors open, we’re not going to get a change in the weather. It is what it is. (We heat driveways by the acre. Can we refrigerate ski runs?) So what do you do with a non-refundable ski vacation with two runs open for you and 15,000 other people skiing in the rain? The second homes with private bowling alleys in the sub-basements suddenly don’t look quite so ridiculous under the conditions. Get the toddler grandchildren ice cream cones and take them on a gallery stroll on Main Street. Yikes. Are the movie theaters still open? Years ago, a bunch of us were down in Springdale to go mountain biking. The town was packed with people from all over who had come to see Zion National Park. Because Congress is a collection of idiots, the government had shut down and the park was closed.  We were headed to Gooseberry, so it didn’t make a lot of difference to us, though it was clearly a disaster in town. Then I saw the most amazing thing.  We went into a café for breakfast, and before asking who wanted coffee, the server would say, “I’m sorry that Congress has wrecked your plans. Can I tell you about some of my favorite things to do outside the park? There’s a lot here to see and do and still have a great time.”  That happened in bike shops, at the hotel front desk, the grocery checkout. Everywhere.  The town clearly had a battle plan for what to do. There was no printed list of alternatives (though somebody had probably prepared one). Instead, it was a very personal acknowledgement from the locals that things were a mess, beyond their control, and they wanted to so what they could to salvage it for their visitors.  Travel Leisure magazine reported that Park City is the most expensive ski destination in the country, ahead of even Aspen, with average room rates clocking in at $1,621 a night.  Deer Valley appears to be sold out for day tickets through the holidays. I can’t tell if that is high demand or if they have reduced numbers to reflect the limited capacity.  The website just shows the dates blocked out.  Park City is offering advance purchase day tickets for the bargain price of $294, or $310 at the window, plus tax, so around $340 for extremely limited terrain. Many of the off-mountain alternatives like snowmobiling and dog sledding aren’t facing any better conditions.  It’s going to be very busy at the Heber bowling alley. Some of my favorite vacations have been the ones where everything went off the rails and we improvised unexpected alternatives.  These are, of course, first world problems. If the biggest problem in life is poor ski conditions, you are going just fine.  This is a season to spend time with those you love, reflecting on the years together and anticipating what’s to come. Merry Christmas, and thanks for your support through the years. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. The post More Dogs on Main: A soggy merry Christmas appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less