EMSC
Well-known member
A really good ski day at Eldora, but a bit of a long story...
Eldora's entire upper mtn was closed due to wind all day thurs, all day fri and while they tried to make a go of it on Saturday, they closed the upper mtn by 10am. So basically 3 days in a row. My count has them up to 12 days or partial days of having to shut the upper mtn this year. A LOT more than the 4-6 that I used to consider typical (last year was a similar # of wind days too)...
Anyway, in that 3 day stretch Eldora got 18" of new snow which no one was really able to get to ski... So it was very crowded for a Sunday. There was an actual lift line on the backside (maybe 5-8min), I actually had to wait 4 chairs to get on Indian Peaks lift (normally deserted and can ski right on), and nearly full pen on the front side for the middle part of the day (maybe 10-15 minutes). The additional crowd seemed to be heavily on the snowboard side, with a lot more boarders around than typical for Eldora.
Official Snotel site is up to 101% of normal for Eldora finally, so very few places left to hit anything even on the steep stuff. You can mostly just go... Snow today was soft & great basically everywhere - but untracked places. In the woods or other untracked areas the snow was either wind affected or even deep in the trees somehow consolidated so that it was kind of chunky, not light & dry fluff. Tough to get your turns to be predictable which is not a good thing in the tighter trees.
Still a really good ski day on the hill, though the wind was picking up yet again by mid afternoon. And even though Eldora is known for being kind of breezy, it's been a bit crazy with the wind this year and last.
Eldora's entire upper mtn was closed due to wind all day thurs, all day fri and while they tried to make a go of it on Saturday, they closed the upper mtn by 10am. So basically 3 days in a row. My count has them up to 12 days or partial days of having to shut the upper mtn this year. A LOT more than the 4-6 that I used to consider typical (last year was a similar # of wind days too)...
Anyway, in that 3 day stretch Eldora got 18" of new snow which no one was really able to get to ski... So it was very crowded for a Sunday. There was an actual lift line on the backside (maybe 5-8min), I actually had to wait 4 chairs to get on Indian Peaks lift (normally deserted and can ski right on), and nearly full pen on the front side for the middle part of the day (maybe 10-15 minutes). The additional crowd seemed to be heavily on the snowboard side, with a lot more boarders around than typical for Eldora.
Official Snotel site is up to 101% of normal for Eldora finally, so very few places left to hit anything even on the steep stuff. You can mostly just go... Snow today was soft & great basically everywhere - but untracked places. In the woods or other untracked areas the snow was either wind affected or even deep in the trees somehow consolidated so that it was kind of chunky, not light & dry fluff. Tough to get your turns to be predictable which is not a good thing in the tighter trees.
Still a really good ski day on the hill, though the wind was picking up yet again by mid afternoon. And even though Eldora is known for being kind of breezy, it's been a bit crazy with the wind this year and last.
. I don't even recall exactly what was happening at that particular moment, but I quickly got distracted by something or someone else race related right about then.