Significant snow was not expected to start until Sunday afternoon, but there were 4.5 inches overnight. Snow was quite dense, which was desirable to resurface the spring base. It also snowed off and on all day. We arrived about 9:30 at the Mary Jane base and headed up top for hopefully lighter snow. The new snow and closing attracted a moderate crowd, so the Panoramic 6-pack chair was running about ¾ capacity. We still got in 2 Parsenn Bowl runs just moderately tracked and occasionally hitting the subsurface.
The next 2 runs we followed the skier’s right boundary, first all the way to Parry’s Peek and then dropping through the Forever Eva trees. The snow became noticeably heavier below 11,000 feet.
At 11:45 we left via Sunnyside and skied to the Winter Park base to watch the Spring Splash. There were 101 entrants and they had to ski an obstacle course of gates before the final straightline to about a 3 foot launch ramp into the pond. This year’s event was weather challenged. It was snowing during the event but below 9,500 feet there had been more rain than snow overnight so the surface was wet and slow. Only a few competitors were able to get enough speed to cross the whole pond. Some preferred to make crowd pleasing jumps and big splashes instead.
We got cold after watching 30 people or so and went inside for lunch. After lunch we took one lap on the Zephyr lift, then moved to Olympia, which we figured had the least skier traffic. While most of the terrain there is flat we found some short untracked pitches in the scattered trees near Cheshire Cat. At 3:30 we skied back to Mary Jane and took on last run. We happened across the top of the old Challenger lift, which is site of a local’s season ending party.
People arriving on the Challenger lift are greeted with snowballs, similar to Mammoth's upper gondola riders on its closing day.
Then we skied some lightly tracked trees near Little Ten into Sleeper.
We finished with 17,500 vertical, about 4K of powder, which has been a rare commodity in 2015.
The next 2 runs we followed the skier’s right boundary, first all the way to Parry’s Peek and then dropping through the Forever Eva trees. The snow became noticeably heavier below 11,000 feet.
At 11:45 we left via Sunnyside and skied to the Winter Park base to watch the Spring Splash. There were 101 entrants and they had to ski an obstacle course of gates before the final straightline to about a 3 foot launch ramp into the pond. This year’s event was weather challenged. It was snowing during the event but below 9,500 feet there had been more rain than snow overnight so the surface was wet and slow. Only a few competitors were able to get enough speed to cross the whole pond. Some preferred to make crowd pleasing jumps and big splashes instead.
We got cold after watching 30 people or so and went inside for lunch. After lunch we took one lap on the Zephyr lift, then moved to Olympia, which we figured had the least skier traffic. While most of the terrain there is flat we found some short untracked pitches in the scattered trees near Cheshire Cat. At 3:30 we skied back to Mary Jane and took on last run. We happened across the top of the old Challenger lift, which is site of a local’s season ending party.
People arriving on the Challenger lift are greeted with snowballs, similar to Mammoth's upper gondola riders on its closing day.
Then we skied some lightly tracked trees near Little Ten into Sleeper.
We finished with 17,500 vertical, about 4K of powder, which has been a rare commodity in 2015.
