Yesterday's 14 inches was an anomaly. The report said 6" mid, 14" summit, 5" mid since the mountain closed. What does one make of that, while lying in a very uncomfortable bed 2 hours from home at 5am? We had three options: 1. We could have stayed in Vail and skied, but purchasing lift tickets when you have a season pass just seems inane. 2. Stay in Vail and have breakfast with our buddies. 3. Drive home and expect the best. Needless to say if the report had been 1", we would have opted for choice #2. But 14" would get anyone up and going. So we blazed out of Vail (their report was 8"), and met the group of Denver friends
waiting for us at home. A cloudless sunrise drive to a bluebird powder day awaiting...
First and second glances at the base and top of the Gondola struck the group of us with some wonder... Fourteen? Where?
Rudy's was a smoothed glade with about 2" max on top of it, a very tasty run to Four Points none the less. Sunset brought a few more inches to taste, maybe 5" on top of set bumps, bouncing us all the way down Lights Out. But certainly not the foot-plus that our front rangers were looking for. YET. So we went looking.
Still about only 5" on 1:00 and in the trees that surround, but 5 on top of a groomer was still worth driving from Vail for. Not that we have anything against Vail, however after several drinks, a fun concert at Dobson, and some interaction with our local buddy Kevin's x girlfriend, and a new Vail motto has been formed: Vail is full of bitches. Well, 'cuz, it is.
So back to the 'Boat (which might also need a new motto)... and the stashes.
Westside: none but what's on the right side hill as usual. Hill has been renamed: Craig's Ridge.
Top of Sunshine LiftLine/Keith's Ridge: definitely best first tracks as usual.
Sundial and trees between that and Tomohawk: actually almost knee deep in spots and untracked.
Ramrod: ridiculously nice as usual.
Huevos/"Kodak" (Morningside): knee deep and untracked.
Upper trees left of Hurricane: untracked and shin deep.
Verdict: Another lovely day on the mountain under blue skies, but still left us wondering, where's the beef?
After a quick ride up the lift we were off to Blizzard and the powdery bottom pitch of Norther and on to BC for a fresh look at Sunnyside. While this Hick I know and Flyers Dave snuck into Elkhead trees, I ventured over to the treeline along Sunnyside and down the steep pitch of Elkhorn (I bet a lot of locals don’t even know what that trail is called). Next up was the Wally World Cornice (AKA Black Power) over to Ramrod, which if you don’t know about you really should. And then the trusty South Peak lift gave us a ride up to the top of West Side. Craig’s Ridge was as tasty as ever with huge piles of snow and not tracks at all. After a couple of the old stand by’s we decided to venture to new stashes (at least for me). Kodak was calling Keith’s name so we headed over to Morningside to get some cool pictures in the deep. And DEEP it was! In fact the snow was so nice that we did it twice.
And after pounding out a few more of our favorites, like Billy Kidd Trees and Keith’s ridge we headed to the top for one last top to bottom. Storm Peak Face to Mustache to Sunset to Rudy’s to Vagabond to Lower Concentration to Rough Rider to Beeline and home! A beautiful, cold, blue sky powder day was just what I needed today.
Perish the thought, but we slept in. We're not total slackers, we called the snow report at 6am and heard "4 new inches since the mountain closed... NOT currently snowing." To me that meant dust-on-crust, and a Monday in the office. When we actually made it to the living room however and looked at the deck, the house was in full-blown emergency... nearly a FOOT was on the deck, how the hell can that be?? We made it to the hill by 9 in record time, and one look at Concie below us on T-head was enough to make us wonder... someone had either made a mistake, or we'd gotten nearly a foot of snow in 2 hours.
It was the latter.
After turns through knee-deep piles on Blizzard, we headed for the top- a brave trek across the gusty, windblown Face to get to an epic run down Sunset to Moonlight trees. The snow is not only deep, it's light. Again, we were in shock- yesterday's 40 degree temps seemed to blow out with the sunny skies, it's about 20 up there with a foot of fresh! We went from the most perfect weather for the Winter Carnival I've ever seen to one of the best powder days of the year... it was RAINING when we came home from the movies last night- go figure!
Mind you, when scraped off in spots (lower High Noon, say) there was indeed some *cccrrrrrhh* sounds beneath us. But if you stayed in the trees, hunting for the goods, you had no problem finding them. You know where that is... we'll selfishly keep our secret stashes to ourselves today, we earned them.
In addition to the surprising conditions, also odd were the pockets of people. For instance, Rudy's was littered with timid skiers going around the push piles. Yet we saw not a soul on Storm Face and Sunset. Even upper High Noon was void when we were there, yet after a lap up Sundown there were hundreds at the top, just stagnant; as if waiting for each other.
To avoid the groups going down from there, we took another lap down Sideburn, and I saw one person between there and Rainbow to Hurricane. Some phenomenon I can't explain was keeping the groups together enough that there were wide open powder turns down Hurricane still at 11:30. We caught our last turns down Concentration finally, making a last minute lap up Thunderhead again to earn them, and well worth the wait. Up to our knees yet again.
This beats out all the jealousy I had over the weekend for our pal Jake who was storm chasing in the south, the Champagne has returned!!
-See you in the Deep!