At the mouth of the canyon is a 10,000 year-old lateral glacial moraine. This is literally a pile of rocks and debris that were plowed out of the canyon by a glacier and left there after the glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. The ridge of this moraine is cut by the Wasatch Fault at several places. It is here that you can actually measure that the fault is moving approximately 1 mm per year. That’s wicked fast in geologic time.

So in the end the ski test all comes down to the Wasatch Fault and how fast it is moving. The Wasatch Mountains are getting bigger—fast. This is why (in addition to some pretty good snow and even better people) we will keep testing skis at Snowbird as long as they will let us. Thank you Wasatch Fault (and thank you Snowbird).