What a beautiful spring day at Copper. My snow-boarding daughter took an all-day lesson, which allowed me to roam the mountain on my own. I started from the ski school at Union Creek and worked my way east. Conditions were packed powder on the front side, except at the very bottom where there was just a little crud in a few places. Copper Mountain has stayed cold enough during this warm spell to avoid the dreaded melt/freeze (on the front side anyway). Took a couple runs on a black groomer in the Copper Bowl. That area had slushed up the day before and refrozen. Anyway, with all of the nice wide, long groomed blue and black trails on the front side, I had a great time making my way across the mountain and back. There were hardly any lift lines anywhere. The only line of any real nature was at the Storm King puma lift. The ski school, for some reason, took a couple groups of kids up there and some of the poor youngsters didn’t seem to be having any fun with it and opted to give up after a few tries. I didn't mind the wait, but there was some grumbling from the less patient. The wait was worth it, just to see the views from up there. Fortunately, there was a groomed black run for me to take down. It was a little windy up there at the top, but nothing like EMSC has described. Anyway, a great day of skiing for me, and riding for my daughter. Due to skiing alone, the several high-speed lifts and no lift lines, I think I skied more total vertical today than ever before.
Some of the photo descriptions are guesses.
Some of the photo descriptions are guesses.
Almost everything was re-frozen slush and totally bullet-proof -- even groomers -- and nothing softened in the afternoon. Only exception we could find was the upper level of the Parsenn Bowl area, which pretty much maintained packed powder conditions. We didn't venture into the Vasquez Cirque area, which is about the same altitude as Parsenn's; perhaps it was OK as well.
/ This was true of the ungroomed stuff off of the Excelerator, and the high part of the Jupiter Bowl. (As you got down closer to the Sierra lift base, things got a bit more crusty, but still enjoyable.) It was clear that there had not been a total meltdown here as there was at WP. The groomed runs off the Super Bee (Andy's, Rosi's) were very nicely surfaced, but here I infer it was probably due more to good grooming, since the ungroomed run directly next to Rosi's (I think it's called Treble Cliff) was pretty cruddy. Still, I have to think that they didn't totally melt, or they could not have been so well groomed.