Yesterday was 72F in Denver, but they predicted that a storm would blow through Colorado in the middle of the night, and it did.
Tough driving conditions combined with typically lame CO drivers turned a 2.5-hour drive to Monarch into a four-hour death march. Never fails to astound me how people who live so close to mountains drive so poorly in snow. We didn't get on the lift until 11 am, and it was basically a top-to-bottom whiteout. Puking snow with 40 mph gales made it tough to see more than a few feet ahead of you.
Adding to the fun was that the previous two days were almost t-shirt warm there, so the base was refrozen concrete covered with close to a foot of new snow, but most of it had been blasted into the woods, so that's where I went. It was tough to learn the hill with such poor visibility, but the trees were knee-deep or more. There are some really flat spots in inconvenient places, and with the new snow, it was tough to keep momentum, but Monarch seems like a fun under-the-radar kind of place.
Taking pix was out of the question. You would've just seen white. We're staying the next three nights in Gunnison... tomorrow should be party time. I'll make a point of heading over to Mirkwood Bowl.
And before I incur the wrath of ChrisC, Crested Butte is on the menu for Tuesday and Wednesday. Everyone's raving about the conditions there.
Tough driving conditions combined with typically lame CO drivers turned a 2.5-hour drive to Monarch into a four-hour death march. Never fails to astound me how people who live so close to mountains drive so poorly in snow. We didn't get on the lift until 11 am, and it was basically a top-to-bottom whiteout. Puking snow with 40 mph gales made it tough to see more than a few feet ahead of you.
Adding to the fun was that the previous two days were almost t-shirt warm there, so the base was refrozen concrete covered with close to a foot of new snow, but most of it had been blasted into the woods, so that's where I went. It was tough to learn the hill with such poor visibility, but the trees were knee-deep or more. There are some really flat spots in inconvenient places, and with the new snow, it was tough to keep momentum, but Monarch seems like a fun under-the-radar kind of place.
Taking pix was out of the question. You would've just seen white. We're staying the next three nights in Gunnison... tomorrow should be party time. I'll make a point of heading over to Mirkwood Bowl.
And before I incur the wrath of ChrisC, Crested Butte is on the menu for Tuesday and Wednesday. Everyone's raving about the conditions there.
Snow King is more like the local hill that just exists for a few laps.