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BIG COTTONWOOD CANYON - It's standing room only on Utah's ski buses, and sometimes there's not even room to get on.
An enticingly snowy December, coupled with new Utah Transit Authority buses that have slightly fewer seats but fit more gear, made for cramped quarters over a busy holiday season, riders say.
Seventy-four-year-old Brighton Ski Resort season-pass holder Ted Felis said he gave up trying to get on a UTA bus up the icy canyon after two passed him but couldn't squeeze him in. And though he understands that the nine new buses introduced into the 32-bus ski fleet this winter burn cleaner and power up the hill faster, they're a tighter fit and they haul more skis and snowboards inside instead of on outer racks - a convenience the agency has promoted.
"You gotta have a skinny little ass to sit in those seats," Felis said. "You're jammed in like sardines. There's hardly any room to stand."
The day he was left on the roadside, he said, a dozen other skiers were stranded with him.
Last December 47,000 people rode UTA ski buses, followed by 70,000 in January. This season's numbers aren't in yet, but they are thought to be precipitously higher because last winter was a poor snow season. Last year's season total was just 271,000, compared with 386,000 in the 2005-2006 winter.
To UTA officials and drivers, this year's boom in ski bus riders is a mixed blessing. It means their service, paid in part by the five resorts that use it, is increasingly vital to those who won't or can't risk the winding, slick roads in their own vehicles. But it also means they can't always keep up - especially during the holidays or after big snowstorms.
"[Drivers] have felt that the buses have been full and there have been a lot of situations where the buses have been packed and people may be standing," spokesman Chad Saley said. "That's largely due to the holiday season and the snow we've gotten."
Equally frustrating to some riders, he said, is that seven snowslide closures in the canyons so far this season have delayed buses, causing them to load up more people.
On weekends, the transit agency has flexibility to peel buses from reserves or other routes to add ski service, and has done so, Saley said.
"Thus far this season we've felt like we've done a pretty good job getting everybody up and everybody down," he said.
It's a logistical quandary unique among major American transit agencies. While many small resort towns run ski buses, UTA operates in a metropolitan area with more than 500 buses and some 70 rail transit cars. Yet, its routes run so close to the slopes that it schedules daylong routine service there.
"It's a balancing act," said Lance Apperson, a UTA employee who patrols the canyons in a Ford Explorer every morning trying to troubleshoot transit bottlenecks. When he sees people stranded and trying to get to Brighton and Solitude, he sometimes radios for an Alta/Snowbird-bound bus to pick them up and bring them to the canyon mouth, where they might catch another bus that has open seats.
He can't routinely order up more buses when there's a glut of passengers, though. If he did that in the morning, his evening counterpart would have trouble transporting all of those people back into town.
On Friday morning, he parked at Brighton's parking lot and saw dozens of private tour buses lined up. It was good that the sun shone and the pavement was dry, he said, because many of the tour bus drivers are Californians accustomed to clear roads. When it snows, they drop their passengers at the canyon mouths and let UTA deal with them.
"Unfortunately, for the weeks that we have all this traffic, we can't just hire more people and bring more buses on," Apperson said. And such weeks are unpredictable, based on weather.
Many riders report that the crush is densest when a day on the slopes ends.
"On the way down, people are standing all the way," said Thomas Ehart, a Solitude Mountain Resort worker who takes the roughly one-hour ride each way daily from the Midvale light-rail station.
Ehart rode a mid-morning bus up the canyon on Friday, and its seats were full despite the fact that the early risers already were on the lifts. Two snowboarders sat in the rear door well.
He doesn't mind a crowd, though sometimes in the afternoons the bus smells like a gym locker room. Others, though, won't get on the bus when it's crammed, he said.
"A lot of people prefer not to stand because coming down the hill it can be kind of scary [and a strain]," he said. They wait for the next bus, or two.