EMSC
Well-known member
Yay, one final day this season for me.
I headed up thinking it would be frozen hard first thing in the morning. So I arrived about 10am after driving through a heavy snow squall. It turned out to be just enough. maybe only a half inch at the base was a dense 1-2" up top and it mostly skied like a thin layer of butter. The weather mixed it up on the hill with lots of overcast and even flurries for most of the day, but with a few peaks of sun in the afternoon thrown in for good measure. While it had all the makings for dust on crust, the only truly frozen sub-surfaces were actually relatively rare (a few windblown areas up top).
Copper had shut much of it's best stuff including the entirety of Copper bowl and Tucker mtn - Boo. I smell the influence of Powdr Corp in that decision. It is true that Copper had a bad snow year. I was a bit shocked at the bare or nearly bare spots on the last 500 vert or so on the mtn. Even in snowmaking areas. Yikes! I wouldn't be surprised if Eldora had as much snow as Copper this year (quite a few upslopes that seemed to hit Eldo perfect while skipping Loveland or Abasin this year - it was kind of weird).
Anyway, I did laps in Spaulding bowl intermixed with laps on A-chair for most of the morning. Probably 6 cornice Chute laps with 3 or 4 A-Chair only laps intermixed in (so ~10 times down a chair terrain in total). Spaulding bowl, while open, required an annoying traverse out the bottom over to a-chair; since like much of the other good stuff, resolution chair was also closed. The key to a good lap was to find 'untracked' for some surprisingly buttery turns given the small amount of new snow. Eventually i headed over to Sierra chair where, due to the closure of Mtn Chief, Union bowl was hike-to. About 100 or 150 vert of hiking. I found a section to skiers right of the main bowl where the new snow had drifted in to 3-4" deep and underneath was a smooth surface. It was the run of the day. Which I proceeded to do 3 times in a row. Almost no one was thinking about the hike, wind drifting up that high etc... to find it. Only a few tracks even by the time I quit with rubbery legs about 3:30pm.
For once I went into the main base area to check things out. I caught the end of the Red bull 1976 events (see pics), and listened to the free Perpetual Groove concert (pretty decent actually), leaving about 5pm before Steel Pulse could take the stage. While I would have preferred 6"+ of new snow, I only had to deal with a few short sections of dust on crust. I'll take it, especially this year.
I took a lot of pics today so it'll be 2 posts worth.
I headed up thinking it would be frozen hard first thing in the morning. So I arrived about 10am after driving through a heavy snow squall. It turned out to be just enough. maybe only a half inch at the base was a dense 1-2" up top and it mostly skied like a thin layer of butter. The weather mixed it up on the hill with lots of overcast and even flurries for most of the day, but with a few peaks of sun in the afternoon thrown in for good measure. While it had all the makings for dust on crust, the only truly frozen sub-surfaces were actually relatively rare (a few windblown areas up top).
Copper had shut much of it's best stuff including the entirety of Copper bowl and Tucker mtn - Boo. I smell the influence of Powdr Corp in that decision. It is true that Copper had a bad snow year. I was a bit shocked at the bare or nearly bare spots on the last 500 vert or so on the mtn. Even in snowmaking areas. Yikes! I wouldn't be surprised if Eldora had as much snow as Copper this year (quite a few upslopes that seemed to hit Eldo perfect while skipping Loveland or Abasin this year - it was kind of weird).
Anyway, I did laps in Spaulding bowl intermixed with laps on A-chair for most of the morning. Probably 6 cornice Chute laps with 3 or 4 A-Chair only laps intermixed in (so ~10 times down a chair terrain in total). Spaulding bowl, while open, required an annoying traverse out the bottom over to a-chair; since like much of the other good stuff, resolution chair was also closed. The key to a good lap was to find 'untracked' for some surprisingly buttery turns given the small amount of new snow. Eventually i headed over to Sierra chair where, due to the closure of Mtn Chief, Union bowl was hike-to. About 100 or 150 vert of hiking. I found a section to skiers right of the main bowl where the new snow had drifted in to 3-4" deep and underneath was a smooth surface. It was the run of the day. Which I proceeded to do 3 times in a row. Almost no one was thinking about the hike, wind drifting up that high etc... to find it. Only a few tracks even by the time I quit with rubbery legs about 3:30pm.
For once I went into the main base area to check things out. I caught the end of the Red bull 1976 events (see pics), and listened to the free Perpetual Groove concert (pretty decent actually), leaving about 5pm before Steel Pulse could take the stage. While I would have preferred 6"+ of new snow, I only had to deal with a few short sections of dust on crust. I'll take it, especially this year.
I took a lot of pics today so it'll be 2 posts worth.
