send in the canaries

clean as a whistle above 8000

Utah is a beautiful place, home to the "best powder on earth." But the unique geography and climate here that give powderwhores the world over something to get radical in and write home about, is also responsible for a unique brand of "inversion" - something a little more sinister than a few powdery face shots. The legendary high-pressure systems over the Great Basin that bring in retarded amounts of fluffy gnar, are also responsible for weeklong periods of stagnant temperature inversions (an air "sandwich" of sorts, with temperatures being the breads, and smog being the bologna) over the Salt Lake valley. This effect is worsened, given the bowl-shaped topography of the valley, one which happens to be filled to the stained brim with every make and model of inefficient, four-wheel-drive hooptie known to man. So now that we have our little inversion "sandwich," think of the valley as a roundish tupperware bowl. Place the sandwich inside, and we'll pop the aforementioned airtight lid of our high-pressure system on, and you'll begin to understand why SLC (despite it's comparatively small size to other cities on the list) is a surprising number six on the illustrious "most polluted" cities of the US. Granted, if you're a meteorologist or a fan of lunch-based metaphors, I'm sure this is all sorts of fucking fascinating. However, if you're a year-round cyclist such as myself, to put it rather bluntly, riding SLC inversion blows a bushel basket of beaver dicks.