Although Vail reported 5 inches new snow Tuesday, we did not get started at Lionshead until 10AM. We assumed Vail would have been hammered on Monday given consensus opinion that it’s much busier than Beaver Creek.
Liz and were also not exactly bursting with energy after Monday’s 5+ hour powderfest. I said that we needed to find fun and interesting terrain without taxing ourselves too much, but that we were on one of the best mountains in the world for that plan.
We had short liftlines on Born Free and Avanti to start the day. A local intermediate on a chair ride warned us that the direct lines into Game Creek were unpleasant from sun exposure. However 15 inches of snow in 3 days has gone a long way toward burying last week’s spring conditions. Most turns on the Faro run we skied were in lightly cut powder. The same was true for more favorably exposed Baccarat.
Game Creek did not have a lift line, but the chair was stopping a lot, and in any case I wanted to ski through some of the Back Bowls to Blue Sky Basin.
Weather was a bit colder than Monday, with occasional wind on a few lifts and the top of Game Creek was in fog when we left. We dropped immediately into Morningstar Ridge which had some trees for perspective. Once through the trees the fog eased off some and by skiing a diagonal line at intermediate pitch once again most of the turns were in powder.
We rode High Noon and skied groomed slot to the Sun Up lift. We started down the ridgeline under Sundown Express as it had a layer of windsift. We dropped left in Genghis Khan with a few scraped turns when it was steeper at the top. But the rest of the run had large patches of mixed powder and windsift.
Note the heavy crowd that Liz is competing with for this mostly untracked snow about 11:30am.
We skied past Orient Express and rode Skyline into Blue Sky Basin. On a 6 inch day in 2015 I had a few nearly untracked runs off Earl’s lift. It wasn’t quite like that but still mostly powder turns.
We left this area via Lovers Leap in my case, view back up from below:
There’s a somewhat tedious exit trail below leading to Pete’s lift. Liz skied the longer fall line of Heavy Metal though went off trail trying to get to the lift. I skied the mellow Grand Review and we regrouped at Sundown Express. View back to Blue Sky Basin:
We skied our only crappy snow conditions of the day in Dragon’s Teeth to reach Orient Express.
I wanted to check out Mongolia Bowl, which I had only skied a couple of times and did not recall well. We were on our way to the poma lift when I noticed lightly tracked snow on the east facing snow below the cat walk. Since the poma terrain faced more directly south and it was past 2PM, we decided to seize the bird in the hand, Gorky Park. The pitch was very intermediate with mostly powder turns.
We skied the exit road back to Orient Express, both agreeing that we were badly in need of a break at Two Elk. As we exited Orient Express the skies unloaded, dumping snow. The heavy snow continued through our soup lunch and the Flapjack, Whistle Pig and Born Free runs we needed to ski via Northwoods and Wildwood to return to Lionshead.
We finished at exactly 4pm with 24,400 vertical including about 5K of powder. Despite the oft valid critiques of Vail the corporation, Vail the mountain remains a favorite per my start of the day prediction and disperses its crowds extremely well, as noted in the handful of pics I took today.
Liz and were also not exactly bursting with energy after Monday’s 5+ hour powderfest. I said that we needed to find fun and interesting terrain without taxing ourselves too much, but that we were on one of the best mountains in the world for that plan.
We had short liftlines on Born Free and Avanti to start the day. A local intermediate on a chair ride warned us that the direct lines into Game Creek were unpleasant from sun exposure. However 15 inches of snow in 3 days has gone a long way toward burying last week’s spring conditions. Most turns on the Faro run we skied were in lightly cut powder. The same was true for more favorably exposed Baccarat.
Game Creek did not have a lift line, but the chair was stopping a lot, and in any case I wanted to ski through some of the Back Bowls to Blue Sky Basin.
Weather was a bit colder than Monday, with occasional wind on a few lifts and the top of Game Creek was in fog when we left. We dropped immediately into Morningstar Ridge which had some trees for perspective. Once through the trees the fog eased off some and by skiing a diagonal line at intermediate pitch once again most of the turns were in powder.
We rode High Noon and skied groomed slot to the Sun Up lift. We started down the ridgeline under Sundown Express as it had a layer of windsift. We dropped left in Genghis Khan with a few scraped turns when it was steeper at the top. But the rest of the run had large patches of mixed powder and windsift.
Note the heavy crowd that Liz is competing with for this mostly untracked snow about 11:30am.
We skied past Orient Express and rode Skyline into Blue Sky Basin. On a 6 inch day in 2015 I had a few nearly untracked runs off Earl’s lift. It wasn’t quite like that but still mostly powder turns.
We left this area via Lovers Leap in my case, view back up from below:
There’s a somewhat tedious exit trail below leading to Pete’s lift. Liz skied the longer fall line of Heavy Metal though went off trail trying to get to the lift. I skied the mellow Grand Review and we regrouped at Sundown Express. View back to Blue Sky Basin:
We skied our only crappy snow conditions of the day in Dragon’s Teeth to reach Orient Express.
I wanted to check out Mongolia Bowl, which I had only skied a couple of times and did not recall well. We were on our way to the poma lift when I noticed lightly tracked snow on the east facing snow below the cat walk. Since the poma terrain faced more directly south and it was past 2PM, we decided to seize the bird in the hand, Gorky Park. The pitch was very intermediate with mostly powder turns.
We skied the exit road back to Orient Express, both agreeing that we were badly in need of a break at Two Elk. As we exited Orient Express the skies unloaded, dumping snow. The heavy snow continued through our soup lunch and the Flapjack, Whistle Pig and Born Free runs we needed to ski via Northwoods and Wildwood to return to Lionshead.
We finished at exactly 4pm with 24,400 vertical including about 5K of powder. Despite the oft valid critiques of Vail the corporation, Vail the mountain remains a favorite per my start of the day prediction and disperses its crowds extremely well, as noted in the handful of pics I took today.
