Hi there, my name is Daniel and I am the “new guy” here at Ski Utah. For that reason I thought I would take some time with my first post to introduce myself, tell you my story, and kind of give you an idea what I hope to do around here for the 12/13 season.
I was born and raised in Alabama (No seriously I was, but stick with me here it gets better I swear) .. anyways I was born and raised in Alabama where, obviously, it rarely snows. My first memory of snow was when I was in 2nd grade. It snowed so much it actually stayed around for two whole days. It was an Alabama kids dream, and we even got out of school! The only problem was my mom was home sick and she wouldn’t let me go outside and play in the snow. Picture if you will those super dramatic animal commercials that come on late at night, but instead of some poor downtrodden dog place 8 year old me at a window, looking out helpless as my friends played in this rarest of Alabama occasions. This began my snow obsession, actually it probably didn’t, but it is a great story to have to shift blame on my mom especially at the times when she brings up my snowbum-ness and its correlation to me not using my college degree.
My first real snow sport experience was when I was fifteen and came out during Christmas break to visit my dad, who had moved to SLC a few years prior. I went cross country skiing in Millcreek Canyon and did some regular skiing at Alta. Fast forward about 10 years and I found myself in a loaded U-haul making the move to SLC. I already knew at that point I was going to start snowboarding as soon as possible but never knew how much I would love it. I still remember my first day, not really the conditions or anything like that but just that feeling when I strapped in and went down the hill. I have a surf and skate background so I understood the mechanics before doing it and picked it up immediately. I also remember thinking to myself “I to do this for the rest of my life.” So that’s what I’ve done. My “stay in SLC a couple of years” move from Alabama has now entered its 16th year and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.
In 2008 I started a blog based off of an alias I was using around the internet which was Burritosandsnow (because I like burritos and I like snow). Over the past few years I grew that blog and the accompanying Facebook and Twitter pages to moderate success … at least enough success to start doing projects with other industry outlets. So now here I am working with the good people at Ski Utah to help promote two of my favorite things snow and Utah. Over the course of the season I hope to make posts that will highlight Utah’s amazing assortment of resorts and let you see how and why each one of them is special in its own way. From Pow edits to write ups with local insider information I hope to cover a broad range of material. I hope you will enjoy the reading as much as I do living and writing it.
