EMSC
Well-known member
Quick new report, as it was quite different today than yesterday.
4" of new to start and snowing all day so nice & soft everywhere. pretty much everything skied decently, but pick of the day was Powderhorn prior to lunch. Seems no one knew it was open or something; as the main entrance was roped, but a secondary one was open. Even at 10:30 it was pretty much not touched at all so we skied 4-6" of untracked for several laps before others caught on that it was even open. The trees to the side are usually good unofficial glades but are currently a huge pile of slash from beetle kill trees that were cut down over the summer. Just big areas of logs, stumps and branches in the middle. In a typical year it would be decent by now. Instead it will take at least 2 more feet of settled base to even be skiable.
Winds were light in the am with temps up around 20F making things feel almost warm compared to recent days. Eventually the wind picked up a bit but mostly was super gusty. So much so that the gusts forced the upper mtn to close just after 2pm (I doubt that the steady wind was more than 10mph - but gusts were very strong). I didn't care, I had ~20K verts and the fresh was pretty much all gone on open terrain by then anyway.
Not a bad ski day, as once again, less on the coaching and more on the skiing for me. The 'famous' Shelf Road was a bit icy coming down. A guy 2 cars ahead had fun with spinning around and hitting a snowbank in his pickup truck that he was driving a bit fast for the conditions. Now I see a few snow squalls have followed me back down to the front range where roads have been dry all day up to this point...
4" of new to start and snowing all day so nice & soft everywhere. pretty much everything skied decently, but pick of the day was Powderhorn prior to lunch. Seems no one knew it was open or something; as the main entrance was roped, but a secondary one was open. Even at 10:30 it was pretty much not touched at all so we skied 4-6" of untracked for several laps before others caught on that it was even open. The trees to the side are usually good unofficial glades but are currently a huge pile of slash from beetle kill trees that were cut down over the summer. Just big areas of logs, stumps and branches in the middle. In a typical year it would be decent by now. Instead it will take at least 2 more feet of settled base to even be skiable.
Winds were light in the am with temps up around 20F making things feel almost warm compared to recent days. Eventually the wind picked up a bit but mostly was super gusty. So much so that the gusts forced the upper mtn to close just after 2pm (I doubt that the steady wind was more than 10mph - but gusts were very strong). I didn't care, I had ~20K verts and the fresh was pretty much all gone on open terrain by then anyway.
Not a bad ski day, as once again, less on the coaching and more on the skiing for me. The 'famous' Shelf Road was a bit icy coming down. A guy 2 cars ahead had fun with spinning around and hitting a snowbank in his pickup truck that he was driving a bit fast for the conditions. Now I see a few snow squalls have followed me back down to the front range where roads have been dry all day up to this point...
