You know it's a slim December when the locals are amped up for 8 inches since the mountain closed, 11 in the last 24 hours, but that's what this morning offered as we joined the pack at Storm Peak at 8:52am. It was still snowing lightly at the 5degree summit when we arrived and bombed down Storm Peak; ahh, some of our favorite terrain is finally skiable on December 24th. Merry Christmas!
We continued down Rainbow to freshly-opened Moonlight, littered with piles of new and old snow that hadn't been touched by anyone but Ski Patrol. It was warmer as usual on the "sunny side", so we took a lap up Sundown and tried out 1 Oclock and into the 1230 trees. Also seemingly virgin for the 09-10 season, our all-time favorite stash was in mint condition. Scared of what was underneath still however, we watched our line carefully, but wow; our billows were over my knees, and over Craig's head. Lovely.
Furthermore, the right side of lower high noon was also among the best I've seen it; knee-high powder mounds primed for bombing.
The fog, goggle failure, and ridiculously low temperatures kept our morning short, we've skied our VA visitor to rubber, and the powder just makes it worse. So after another run, we found our way down to Lower Valley View which has been groovy all week but was divine today.
Merry Christmas everyone! See you In The Deep!
Steamboat hosted yet another Olympic skiing event this holiday week; nordic and alpine skiers competed to qualify for their seat on the Olympic team. 10k, moguls, and aerial categories included, the visitors and locals had a lot to spectate and enjoy during December 23rd and 24th in The Boat. We were also Christmas-blessed as always, and awoke to 11 new inches of snow this morning... more on that in the next post!
The slopes are in good shape, and the safety crew has done a great job at marking most of the obstacles. You can read that as truth, yes there are some rocks, particularly on our favorite Sunshine liftline, and yes, it's glazey on Vagabond but that's the only place on the hill I felt an edge slip.
Stay tuned for more, we've got the Olympic trials on Weds/Thur, and more snow in the forecast! So hopefully we'll see u in the deep soon, and finally!