The back bowls of Vail. From left to right Sun Down, Sun Up, Tea Cup, China, Siberia, Inner Mongolia, Outer Mongolia. 3,017 acres total

Powder at Vail

One of the things I really wanted to do while I was in Colorado was to ski Vail on a big powder day. For each of the four days I had been to Vail this year, the snow has not been great. The snow in the legendary back bowls in particular has sucked each of those times. I've figured out that you need to hit the back bowls on the day of the storm, or the day afterwards to get good snow. The bowls all face South, so even one sunny day after a storm ruins the snow. It becomes crusty and icy very rapidly. For the last month, I've been waiting for a powder day so I could ski Vail. Last night and this morning, Vail was forecasted to get a lot of snow, although these forecasts are rarely correct. I got up early to find out what the snow totals were. Breckenridge reports snowfall at 5am and reported 8" of new snow. Vail is supposed to report at 6:30am. I looked at the website and called their snow report telephone number and got yesterdays report. Around 7:10am the telephone recording changed to today's report. Vail got 5" of snow overnight. I decided to take a chance and head over there anyway. This, after all, may be the only powder day I can get at Vail. Because of the late start and poor driving conditions, I didn't get on the hill until about 9am. I headed for the back bowls immediately. I was delighted to find that not only were the runs uncrowded, but there was far more than 5" of snow in the back bowls. I did a few runs in the Sun Down bowl and got fresh tracks every time. The skiing was spectacular. The Sun Down bowl is the western most bowl at Vail. I began working my way to the East to check out the other bowls. The Sun Up bowl was pretty nice although a bit more crowded. The Tea Cup and China bowls were not very good, because there were big icy moguls under the new snow. I headed to the Inner Mongolia bowl hoping for fewer tracks. I was rewarded with a long run through nearly untracked powder. The runs that I was doing a Vail were unlike any powder runs I had ever skied before. The main difference was the length of the runs. At Breckenridge and other resorts, if you know the right spots, you can get great powder, but it is generally a pretty short section with good snow (maybe 10-15 turns). At Vail, the entire run is powder. The back bowls have 1500-2000' of vert and you can ski powder runs nearly the entire way. Siberia bowl was also spectacular. After lunch I spent some time in Blue Sky Basin. The snow was good back there as well, but it is hard to have fun skiing in the trees when you know you could be skiing the wide open terrain of the back bowls. I spent most of the afternoon lapping Siberia bowls and the Inner and Outer Mongolia bowls. All of the runs had great snow all day long. I guess very few people are willing to venture out into those bowls. It snowed most of the day and I would guess that the back bowls had a foot of snow or more by the end of the day. This was probably the best powder day of my life. It was not the deepest snow I had every skied in, nor did I have the best single runs of my life, it was just the most consistent and uncrowded powder day I have had in recent memory. I skied powder all day long and the snow on the last run was as good as the snow on the first run. On the very last run of the day in the back bowls I hiked about 5 minutes up a ridge in the Siberia Bowl and aired off a 10' cornice into an untracked powder field. I wish I had someone there to take a movie of it. It was a great way to end a spectacular day. I skied 34,430 vertical feet today and it was mostly powder in the back bowls. This was probably my best day of the season.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I hope everyone is enjoying their St. Patrick's Day. I'm relaxing eating corned beef and cabbage and drinking Guinness. One of my favorite meals. March 17th also marks the beginning of the last month that Breckenridge will be open this year. Closing day is April 17th. If anyone wants to come visit while I am here I would suggest that you do so in the next month if you are interested in skiing. April is supposed to be a lot of fun. The slopes are not crowded, it is warm and there is a month long festival going on in town called the Spring Massive. Lift tickets are cheap as well ($39 a day). So come and visit before the opportunity passes.

Snowfall Information

This is an awesome website which has tons of information about snowfall in North America. Before you plan your next ski vacation, make sure to read up. Some of it is pretty surprising. bestsnow.net

A-Basin

I checked out Arapahoe Basin for the first time today. A-Basin is located about 4 miles up the road from Keystone near Loveland pass. It is a small (490 acres) old-school ski resort (no high-speed quads or big condos near the slopes). Most of the terrain is expert bump runs and steeps. It is a bit like Kirkwood in California with slow chairlifts and terrain that caters to experts. The cool thing about A-Basin is that it stays open much later than the other Summit County ski resorts. Most years it stays open until July. It tends to get a lot of snowfall in April and May and it is at a really high altitude. Overall, the resort seemed nice. I'd like to go there on a sunny day. It was a blustery day when we were there and visibility was poor. Much of the basin is above treeline so when it started snowing hard around noon it was a total white out. You couldn't see the snow or the fall line at all and it was tough to ski down a blue run. Once conditions got bad, we headed down to Keystone for the rest of the day where it wasn't snowing at all despite being only 4 miles away. I'll probably be spending a lot of time at A-Basin in the spring after the other resorts in the area close.

Excitement at work

Today something exciting happened at work, although I wasn't directly involved. Breckenridge has a lot of steep terrain in the upper bowls. Every morning, before this terrain is open to the public, ski patrol has to do avalanche control to make sure it is safe. Generally, the terrain opens progressively. The T-Bar opens with access to Horseshoe Bowl first, then the North Bowls and then the Peak 7 bowl. Today while Peak 7 was still closed to the public, some dumbass dude on a mono ski ducked the rope and skied down Vertigo. This is incredibly stupid as he risked being caught in an avalanche or being blown up by a bomb. Ski patrollers chased him down and stopped him trying to get his pass. He refused to give it up and he took off trying to get away from them. The chase proceeded to the parking lot where the guy got in his car and tried to leave. The patrollers got his license plate and had the parking lot staff lock the gates so he couldn't leave. Ducking a rope in Colorado is an arrestable offense, so the sheriff was notified. The sheriff was on the way to the base of Peak 8 when the guy drove over a sidewalk and bunch of cones to get out of the parking lot. The guy got away for the time being, but the sheriff put out an all points bulletin for the vehicle. They caught up to the guy in Frisco (about 10 miles North of Breck) and arrested him. I think that he will be charged with a class 2 petty offense and fined $300 in addition to losing his pass for the season. Quite a price to pay for trying to get fresh tracks on a day when there was only a little bit of new snow. I was hanging out in the patrol hut while all of this was happening. It was pretty funny to hear everything going on.

Pow Pow Powder

March is supposed to be one of the snowiest months in Colorado. So far there hasn't been too much snow, until today. It dumped all day long. I would guess there was at least 18" of powder at the top of the mountain by the end of the day. Although I was "working" today, that didn't stop me from enjoying the fresh snow. On a normal day we are supposed to limit our fun runs a bit. We are supposed to do only 1 run up the T-Bar, one off the 6-Chair and stay off the South side of peak 10 and off of the runs by the E-Chair. On a day like today, our supervisors turn a blind eye. I skied the T-Bar twice, the 6-Chair four times and many other sweet runs (Mineshaft, The Windows, Ore Bucket, Mach 1, Blackhawk) we normally aren't supposed to ski. The skiing was fantastic. It was one of the best Powder days I have had at Breck. Of the 9 hours that I was on the mountain, I probably did a solid 3 hours of actual work. I still can't believe they pay me to do this.