At A-basin, winter is mos def not over yet

johnnash

johnnash

New member
Flew in to Denver late last night, and stopped at a-basin today on our way to Breck, starting skiing A-basin around noon. Snowing off and on all day (at least after we arrived). Having read the reports of the warm temps the last few days, I expected some pretty crunchy surface conditions. But gotta say that the surface is still packed powder on the front side at least. Montezuma is more variable, although mostly PP. Biggest surprise to me was that even the lower runs are PP. Upper Lenawee runs were sometimes very low viz, so I eventually went low to the base (Black Mtn Xpress) , and to my surprise, the surface was basically the same as up top, but much better viz. Last 2 runs were on fun bumps -- Ramrod and Exhibition. I did not ski Pali, but took a look ,and there are still a lot of rocks showing.
Fun photo (not skiing) : http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =1&theater
 
It's nice winter is not over at A-Basin, as it was still less than half open in mid-February. March and April are the best months there for both coverage and snowfall, and it is not unusual to see A-Basin with majority winter conditions in late April.
 
Tony,

Johnnash is referring to a very, very warm 2 days last week in Colorado. 70's in Denver on Friday for example that easily could have skunked most of the snow even up high if normal patterns occured. Not sure if the warm temps were too short to heat the snow pack up, or if downslope winds (it wasn't all that windy Friday in Denver) created a huge temp differential between Denver and the mtns (last I saw highs in the mtns were forecast for upper 40's). Anyway, good to know that at the very least, altitude has kept N facing above 10.8K feet dry so far.
 
Was at Abasin last week for a few days and conditions were very good. They got snow from a big Saturday storm and an unexpected 7 inches early in the week. And although temps climbed later in the week, off and on cloud cover and winds helped keep the snow in decent condition, especially on the north facing slopes on the front. The terrain off of the Pali lift in particular had great snow even on Friday as temps climbed. There were plenty of good lines and chalky snow on Pali proper as well as the other runs off that lift. A few years ago I was there in early April and they had great winter conditions.
 
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