Friday’s weather and conditions looked identical to Thursday, at least to start. By the end of the day it seemed slightly sloppier in direct sun areas. The North Face retained nearly all of its winter snow.
We were surprised to see people skiing fast and spraying snow on the single black groomer International under the Silver Queen lift. A local lady on our chair explained that International was intensely groomed including breaking up hard snow into fine packed powder. So we started with that.
That is a great fall line and snow was as advertised so we took an encore. Another local chair rider later in the day had worked as a groomer for 33 years. She said that hard snow can be broken up like that only on the graveyard shift after 1AM.
We skied 2 groomers on Paradise and 3 on East River before venturing onto the North Face at 12:30. I led Liz to Hawksnest.
On Thursday I had seen the Easy Out exit, just below these skiers.
But Friday we overshot it.
We would have to step back up to about the middle of that pic, but another skier said we could bail out via Buck’s traverse. That traverse was also a route finding adventure, but fortunately the snow was mostly softened not icy and we emerged in the right place.
Liz skied a couple of bump runs, then went down to the base to check out the shops. I skied two more North Face variations, one to Old Pro and the other Hard Slab to The Glades.
After a cruise to the base, I rode Silver Queen for a final run out the Banana/Funnel traverse. This time I skied Peel, which Liz had started down on Thursday. View down on Thursday:
I skied down skier’s left Friday. On Thursday I watched Liz get into skier’s right before traversing further out to Funnel.
The trademark of Crested Butte expert terrain is that often have no idea what you are getting into from above. Below the section visible in the two pics above, looking back up:
Below was sketchier yet.
This is why Liz bailed into the woods skier’s right Thursday and eventually got out with some ski patrol guidance. On Friday I sideslipped between some rocks in that pic and stepped over a couple more to get into a clean line skier’s left.
Looking back up at that section of rocks:
The moguls were tight for a while but at least no more rocks. I saw a couple of skiers climb over logs from skier’s right to get back in Lower Peel from those same woods where Liz had gone Thursday.
View up near bottom of Peel:
I skied 19,600 vertical Friday, another exciting and challenging day with ideal conditions for that terrain.
We were surprised to see people skiing fast and spraying snow on the single black groomer International under the Silver Queen lift. A local lady on our chair explained that International was intensely groomed including breaking up hard snow into fine packed powder. So we started with that.
That is a great fall line and snow was as advertised so we took an encore. Another local chair rider later in the day had worked as a groomer for 33 years. She said that hard snow can be broken up like that only on the graveyard shift after 1AM.
We skied 2 groomers on Paradise and 3 on East River before venturing onto the North Face at 12:30. I led Liz to Hawksnest.
On Thursday I had seen the Easy Out exit, just below these skiers.
But Friday we overshot it.
We would have to step back up to about the middle of that pic, but another skier said we could bail out via Buck’s traverse. That traverse was also a route finding adventure, but fortunately the snow was mostly softened not icy and we emerged in the right place.
Liz skied a couple of bump runs, then went down to the base to check out the shops. I skied two more North Face variations, one to Old Pro and the other Hard Slab to The Glades.
After a cruise to the base, I rode Silver Queen for a final run out the Banana/Funnel traverse. This time I skied Peel, which Liz had started down on Thursday. View down on Thursday:
I skied down skier’s left Friday. On Thursday I watched Liz get into skier’s right before traversing further out to Funnel.
The trademark of Crested Butte expert terrain is that often have no idea what you are getting into from above. Below the section visible in the two pics above, looking back up:
Below was sketchier yet.
This is why Liz bailed into the woods skier’s right Thursday and eventually got out with some ski patrol guidance. On Friday I sideslipped between some rocks in that pic and stepped over a couple more to get into a clean line skier’s left.
Looking back up at that section of rocks:
The moguls were tight for a while but at least no more rocks. I saw a couple of skiers climb over logs from skier’s right to get back in Lower Peel from those same woods where Liz had gone Thursday.
View up near bottom of Peel:
I skied 19,600 vertical Friday, another exciting and challenging day with ideal conditions for that terrain.
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