Keystone Hikes

Keystone has been growing on me. The first time I was there the skiing wasn't that great, but the last two time I have been there during the day, it has been cool. There had been a good amount of new snow in the last few days and I wanted to ski the Outback bowls. These bowls are way out in the back of Keystone and are pretty easy hikes. I hiked them 3 times today. The first hike was about 20 minutes to the top of the peak. I skied the South bowl and it was pretty good with nice snow and good trees. The second time I hiked 5 minutes and dropped a cornice into the south bowl. It was fun, but a little skied out. For the third hike I hiked about 5 minutes again and traversed far into the North Bowl. The snow was great but the run was pretty short. I ended up getting stuck in a creek where the snow was really deep. It took a while to climb out. For some inexplicable reason the Outback bowls close at 1pm for the long hikes and 1:30pm for the short hikes. If I had gotten there earlier I would have hiked to the peak above the North Bowl. The skiing looked really good up there. I spent the next few hours skiing the trees off the Outback Express. Conditions were excellent today. I kind of wish I had skied Keystone more this season.