An Embarrassment of Riches

PARK CITY PROSPERS AMID A WEALTH OF TRAILS

- Mike Ferrentino

Christopher stopped dead in his tracks; fast and without a sound. The suddenness of his deceleration as we climbed through the aspen just above town on Johns trail caught me off-guard and I clumsily, not-so-quietly augured into a tree root while trying to avoid Chris’ rear wheel. He turned and looked back at me with a wide-eyed half smile and pointed ahead on the trail, where a moose calf was walking casually away from us about 10 feet ahead. Moose are widely known as the bad-tempered assholes of the alpine animal kingdom. They are huge, mean, dumb and dangerous. Junior here was the size of a healthy pony, and mom had to be lurking nearby.

Sure enough, mom emerged from the thicket, crossed the trail and carried on in the opposite direction. I exhaled, thankful that we weren’t about to be stomped, and we continued on. The trail looped around, climbed some more, then doubled back on itself above us a few minutes later. Which is when we encountered Dad moose, grazing in the same grove of trees we had just passed through. Shit. I generally try to give moose as wide a berth as possible, will always gladly retreat and keep a lot of trees or a lot of slope between me and them. So having two back-to-back encounters, with about the length of a car separating me from them, was a little jarring. Welcome to Park City, I thought. Pay attention, flatlander.

Meanwhile, having what felt like a raw and primal moment, I could catch a glimpse of the rooftops downtown glittering in the sun, or a chairlift tower jutting from the trees. That’s sort of how it is in Park City. You don’t have to go very far from town to feel like you are Out There, but even with 450-odd miles of trail surrounding the town and the grandeur of the Wasatch Crest splitting the sky to the west, you are never really Out There. Not all the way, at least.