I recently visited the Alf Engen ski museum, which is a great place to take family or out of town guests on a nice summer day. The museum is free, and contains a lot of great photos and nostalgia from the 2002 Winter Olympics, but is also located at the Utah Olympic Park. You can enjoy lunch on the patio while watching aerial ski training, or pry open the wallet for a run on the zip lines or alpine slide.
The museum is quite nice, but I'd like to see an exhibit on Utah's rich backcountry ski history. It makes sense that they emphasize ski jumping as this is how the Engen brothers got Utah skiing started, but there were also people who were touring, especially in the Brighton Basin, long before lifts were erected in the Cottonwoods. This is well documented in Alexis Kelner's book, Skiing in Utah: A History. They could also include something highlighting the accomplishments of Utah's more recent backcountry adventurists.
I did see a few weather faux pas. The lake-effect exhibit is quite sensationalistic with a number of myths and inaccuracies. Beyond that, can you identify the myths or inaccuracies in the photos below (click to enlarge)? In the last one, the error is geographical, not meteorological. The first to answer correctly will go down in Wasatch Weather Weenies lore forever!
1) Everyone knows that the greatest snow on earth is not because of the dry desert air (other locations in the West also have low-density snow), but because of the high frequency with which those low-density snowfalls occur (Steenburgh and Alcott 2008, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society).
ReplyDelete2) Cascade concrete is probably less than a 10:1 ratio.
3) The Paradise Ice Caves are in Washington, not ORegon.