2009 began, for me and a few friends, standing around a fire in the snow behind Mt Timpanogos. We had planned to hike up the road a ways from the Primrose Cirque trailhead and dig some caves, but when we arrived at the parking lot and saw how empty it was (I was expecting a bunch of scouts to be camping in the nearby ampitheater area), we looked at the piles of snow that the plows had pushed up against the sides of the lot and said, "That looks good enough." So we got to work digging our snow caves (or "snow coves" in some cases), then lit a fire, cooked tin foil dinners, and waited for midnight to toast with the traditional sparkling cider and light a few fireworks. The caves weren't technically perfect with low entries to trap the heat (the snow wasn't deep enough for that), but the weather was relatively warm. Just before midnight, we stood still and listened to an avalanche roar down Timp somewhere up the cirque for at least 20 or 30 seconds. My blog's photo uploader is broken...I'll get something up eventually.