Winter Park, CO 1-1-16

EMSC

Well-known member
Nice cruiser day.

Took Jr up for his first day at someplace not named Eldora. Very cold start to the morning with the early snow report listed at -6F. I took a multitude of assumptions for today's jaunt to WP:

1) that new years day traffic up the hill would be much below average due to too many hangovers (we don't stay up for it ourselves)
2) that WP has had a bit more snow than Copper which is also on our passes (none today, but 1.5" just yesterday as a refresher at WP)
3) that WP crowds by early afternoon would be lower than Copper due to the summit county factor. I've heard horror stories of the crowding in Summit this past week.

We headed up early, but not too early given the cold overnight lows. Arriving ~9:30a after an hour and forty min drive. Parking pretty close to the Mary Jane lodge and the Super Gauge lift since, as expected, many people slept in this morning. We went up Super Gauge, turned right and down under Olympia lift which still had some corduroy. Up Olympia and then down Lonesome Whistle which had a very low angle slot through the trees. Perfect for a 6 yr old to play.

In general decent snow conditions, though some firm spots along all the groomers from the very cold days and nights recently. After slogging the horrible lift/trail layout down to the Pioneer lift/Vasquez Ridge area we skied some really soft snow with very few tracks in the trees where I got some low angle 6-8" freshies on the sides of Quickdraw. Very nice snow and Jr's first truly non-groomed. To get there we were on Sundance which had small bumps for Jr's first ever bumps.

After riding up the Pioneer lift our 3rd time we made what turned out to be the call of the day... Pit stop and snack at the small hut up top just before noon. About 1-2 minutes after getting off the lift it broke down. As we ate a quick bite the lift was not re-starting. ~30 minutes later snowmobiles began arriving with patrollers who quickly roped off all but the exit run from that sector. It looked like a long manual evacuation was going to be needed. Then the lift slowly started and moved... less than one chair forward. The top liftie helped that chair remove skis and jump/drop a couple feet off the lift. Even more snowmobiles arrived with partollers; lots with ropes and harnesses being worn, etc... Jr and spouse really wanted to see the evacuation so we milled about for 10 or 15 minutes and just when the evac was about to begin... the lift slowly cranked at about 1/4 speed and this time kept going. Patrol had to have been super happy to not have to do that heavy duty evacuation job for hours.

We ditched quickly before the trapped skiers all started getting off the slowly moving lift. No idea what happened to all the people at the bottom way down in; that were probably never allowed to ride the lift (climb out? snowcat or snowmobiles used?). Anyway we took High Lonesome lift up to the top of Mary Jane and skied under Sunnyside lift and then down the catwalk. Jr desperately wanted to go through the automated RFID ticket gates on Super Gauge again so we obliged him vs staying up top. With one more ride up that lift and then down Mary Jane trail. We pulled the plug a bit after 2pm since we could tell that Jr was getting tired.

The temps had warmed up very nicely by late morning and not a cloud in the sky making for a very pleasant ski day. I hadn't been as sure about traffic volume for the afternoon drive, but we were either too early to get caught or due to the holiday and long weekend it never clogged, I count 9,075 vertical which is Jr's biggest count yet (approx 5-7K vert has been more typical).

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That last picture looks familiar. A car ride after skiing was a sure fire way to get Adam to sleep even well past that age.

Hopefully Jr was enthused about a bigger, more interesting mountain with better snow.
 
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