Rails

One of the skiing skills that I really want to learn is sliding rails. Up until today I had never tries sliding sideways across rails and funboxes. Keystone has a baby rail park that is perfect for learning. It has a bunch of little rails and funboxes which aren't very long or high off the ground. About a week ago I bought a pair of used rental skis for $40 at a store in Frisco. They are 177cm Rossignols that are probably 6 years old or so. Basically they suck and my goal is to destroy them. Using them on rails is perfect. It was so weird going from jumping off cornices in the Outback Bowl to being scared of tiny rails and funboxes in the same day. I spent most of the time practicing on two little funboxes. I would slide each of them, hike back up and do it over and over. It took me probably 10 tries to start to get the hang of it. It is a skiing skill very different from any I currently possess. It turns out the park was not open for night skiing as I had hoped, so I only got to spend about an hour working on the funboxes. I never progressed to the rails. I will definately return though.

Keystone hikes and runs in the South Bowl (This picture was taken from the Vista Haus at Breckenridge)

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.

Aspen Impressions

I had a very good overall impression of Aspen. The skiing was great. Aspen Highlands and Ajax seemed like premier expert areas. Buttermilk (site of the winter X-Games) is also adjacent to the town of Aspen and it is more of a beginner area, but we didn't ski there. The slopes in Aspen were very uncrowded. No lift lines at all on Friday. Snowmass had some crowds, but not too bad. The town also seemed really cool with lots of nice restaurants. The biggest surprise to me was that Aspen did not seem more expensive than other ski towns. Our lodging was relatively cheap, but still very nice. Lift tickets are less than Vail or Beaver Creek. Unless you are shopping at the fur coat store, the cost of skiing in Aspen is probably similar to Breckenridge or Vail. I would have to say, at this point, if I ever take a ski vacation to Colorado again, I would probably go to Aspen. My biggest disappointment while I was here was that I didn't see any celebrities in town or on the slopes. I was really hoping to see Britney Spears or Kevin Costner :-).

Me at Ajax near a grove of Aspen trees. I think this run is Zaugg Dump. It was East facing and the snow sucked.

Ajax

We left Highlands and headed down to Aspen Mountain (aka Ajax) around 2:30pm. Ajax is right on the South side of the town of Aspen. It is a very steep mountain. There is not a single green run on the mountain, and most of the blue runs are difficult blues. There are 3,267 vertical feet and 673 acres of terrain. There is a gondola that goes all the way from the bottom to the top in 15 minutes. We skied the gondola 3 times and a couple other chairs as well. We caught one gondola at 3:35 and got to the top at 3:50. It took 8 minutes to ski all the way down to catch the gondola before it closed at 4pm. After two days of hard skiing and hiking it was tough to ski that fast. My ears popped on the way down. That has never happened to me while skiing before. Our next run took 40 minutes to get all the way down. My one complaint about Ajax was the low elevation of the resort (base 7,945, top 11,212) created some poor snow conditions this late in the season. Some east facing runs were pretty crusty. Other than that it was a pretty cool place to ski.

Dan and I hiked the Highlands Bowl twice. The first time we were probably one of the first 20 people up that day, so we got first tracks coming down. The run was spectacular. The Highlands Bowls is 1,700 vertical feet of really steep bowl skiing (not quite 70-90 degrees). On our first run (red) we skied G-8 with an average pitch of 37 degrees and a maximum pitch of 42 degrees. The second run (yellow) we skied Full Curl with a maximum pitch of 45 degrees. That probably doesn't sound that steep, but it very steep, even for a double black diamond. I don't think I have ever skied a run that is so steep for so long. Most really steep runs are only steep for a few turns and then they flatten out. By the end of each run my thighs were burning, and that is a rare occurance recently. (This photo was taken from the top of the gondola at Ajax).

A little humor at the top of the Highlands Bowl from the Aspen Highlands Ski Patrol

The Maroon Bells (14,156') in the distance from the top of the Highlands Bowl

Top of the Highlands Bowl. The town of Aspen is down the valley to the left.

The hike up the Highlands Bowl (roughly 750' of vert)

Aspen Highlands

We spent the 2nd day at Aspen Highland which is just outside the town of Aspen. As you can tell from the trailmap, the resort is tall and narrow. It had received 5" of new snow overnight and 12" in the last 48 hours. There are a ton of really steep double black runs at Aspen Highlands. The unique feature of the resort is the Highland Bowl which is inbounds hiking terrain. We skiied at Highlands until about 2pm when we left to go ski Ajax.

The town of Aspen

We spent the night in the town of Aspen. I booked the cheapest hotel in town through central reservations. It was $131 for a room with 2 double beds. The Mountain House Lodge where we stayed turned out to be very nice. Right after we checked in the lady behind the front desk informed us that there was wine and cheese down by the Jacuzzi. Now this is what I expected from Aspen. We went and chilled in the hot tub for a while before going out to get dinner. The town of Aspen is pretty nice. The downtown area is large with lots of shops and restaurants. There were tons of ritzy shops selling high fashion clothing, jewelry, fur coats etc. There were tons of restaurants to choose from as well. We had dinner at a pizza place on the recommendation of the hotel staff. It was only about 9:30 when we finished dinner so we went back to the hotel before going out for the night. Unfortunately we both fell asleep and I didn't wake up until about 1:00am, so we never made it back out. I would say the only downside of the entire trip was that we didn't get to experience the Aspen nightlife.

Top of the High Alpine lift at snowmass. That cloud you can see behind me rolled in at the end of the day. At the top of the mountain we were above it. Most of the run down we were in the cloud, but when we reached town we were below it. The entire run was about 3,100 vertical feet.

This run at snowmass was rated EX (a level above double black), but it was the biggest sham I have ever seen. The run was so easy. It was not steep and there were no cliffs. If it were groomed I would rate it a blue square. It should maybe be a black because it was ungroomed, but EX is ridiculous

Snowmass

We spent Thursday skiing at Snowmass. Snowmass is a pretty big mountain (3,100 acres). It also has a huge vertical drop of 4,406 ft. There was 9in of new snow overnight and it was a great powder day. As soon as we arrived we noticed there was a different vibe in Aspen compared to the Vail Resorts. When we got off the Coney Glade lift in the morning we were greeted by guest services ambassadors giving out hot cider and cookies. It was a nice touch, although we found out it's hard to ski and drink at the same time. In the morning we explored the mountain trying to find the best parts. All of the double black terrain off of the Cirque Lift and in the Hanging Valley Wall area was awesome. In some areas there was close to two feet of Powder. Overall it was a pretty cool day. A few complaints about the mountain: The lifts were not laid out very well. When we would do one of the double black runs off the top of the mountain it would take 2 or 3 lift rides to get back to the same spot. A lot of the mountain closed very early. We never were able to check out the Campground base because it closed well before 3pm. The terrain and the snow however was phenomenal.

A little place called Aspin

I spent the last two days in Aspen. It was spectacular. Out of all of the resorts I have skied at in Colorado this year, the resorts in Aspen may be my favorites (even better than Vail). Aspen is about a two and a half hour drive from Breckenridge. I headed over there with my buddy Dan on Thursday morning. On Thursday we skied at Snowmass which is about 9 miles from the town of Aspen. We spent the night at a hotel in the town of Aspen. On Friday we skied at Aspen Highlands and Aspen Mountain (aka Ajax). Both days we had lots of powder and it was a ton of fun. More info to come in adjacent posts.
ps The title to this posting is a double joke from Dumb and Dumber, not a mistake