For these Utah skiers, New Year’s Day is not the time to sleep in

Alta • The sun hadn't quite illuminated the stunning crest of Mount Superior when Randy Poster pulled into the Albion parking lot at Alta Ski Area.

Happy New Year, skier No. 1.

"I typically ski New Year's Day," said the 60-year-old truck driver from West Jordan. "I don't go out the night before and there's fewer people up here early. They're all nursing their New Year's partying so this is the best time to come.

"I love to see the sunrise coming up," he added, as the fine line between light and shadow steadily crept down Superior's steep face. "The pollution and gunk in the valley is depressing. I need to get up here in the sunshine with the clean air."

[Click here to see a photo gallery of New Year's Day skiing.]

To many at Alta — and at the state's 13 other resorts — the best way to usher in the new year is a day on the slopes. And for some, there's no better time to start than early.

Mike and Roxann Johnson from Eagan, Minn., arrived at the Albion Grill shortly after dawn with their grown daughters, Molly and Emily, continuing a tradition that dates to when the girls were young and before a job moved the Johnsons to the Midwest.

"This is a family activity we've been doing year after year for 30 years," Mike Johnson said wistfully, knowing a broken foot would keep him sidelined to the grill's panoramic window while his family skied on a brisk, increasingly cloudy day.

Still, he added, "It's an awesome way to kick off the New Year. And if you have to hang out because of an injury, this is OK. They're such beautiful mountains to look at."

For the O'Leary family from Portland, Ore. — Dad, John, mom Peggy and 20-year-old son Will, a college student — this was the first opportunity to witness an Alta morning.

Having been caught in a midmorning traffic jam headed to the Cottonwood canyons after the big Christmas storm, they vowed not to do that again and reached Alta shortly after Porter.

"It's so socked in in the valley that this is really impressive to me," Peggy O'Leary said as she scanned the Wasatch ridgeline just as Superior's highest points lit up.

Noting that it was Sunday, the setting inspired her husband to repeat a favored quote: "It's better to be skiing and think of God than to be in church thinking about skiing."

Skiing is practically a religion in the Praggastis family, and Alta is a home away from home for clan patriarch Lee and his son, Christopher, both instructors in the ski school.

"This is where we family," said Lee's wife, Cate, an East High School teacher, noting that her immediate family was joined this year for a day of New Year's skiing by a brother from California, his kids and grandkids.

"They're in awe of the spectacular view," Praggastis said. "The sun was just coming up and it was spectacular. To each his own, but that's the way I'd rather celebrate the New Year."

"Way better than being sick and hung over," added her daughter, Amelia, who works part-time in the disabled ski program at Snowbird.

True love brought Shirley Frederick, a retail store manager from Cottonwood Heights, to Alta this New Year's Day.

She didn't learn to ski until she was 58 and met a skier, Dick Raas, "the sweet man in my life. If you had told me seven years ago that I would be up here, I would have told you when pigs fly. Who knew? I love it."

Mike Green loves it, too, and he wants others to appreciate what the mountains have to offer. So he was at Alta early as a volunteer in the U.S. Forest Service's "Ski with a Ranger" program.

"I'm pretty passionate about skiing," said the 69-year-old stained-glass artist, "so to start the year with service work is a pretty nice way to share our beautiful, little world-class ski area and to try to enlighten people through stewardship about our public lands."

Amen.

mikeg@sltrib.com