Yesterday was a phenomenal day on Berthoud Pass. Although it had been warm, sunny, and dry for a few days, the forecast called for it to be cold, cloudy, and windy with a chance of snow. Nate, Jay, and I went up early to get in a good day in the backcountry before heading home to watch the Super Bowl. We pulled into the parking lot about 7:45 and met up with a guy from TGR and his girl for a quick lap. Half an hour later it was completely socked in and snowing fairly hard, though the wind was probably down in the single digits.

We made quick time to treeline on the West side of the pass, and planned our route down into Current Creek.

The most fun section of skiing for the day followed on the initial descent from this point. Unfortunately the snow and clouds killed visibility. None of the shots came out particularly well, but here’s one of Nate to show just how poor the visibility was.

Once we got down to the Current Creek parking lot (and after much anger and frustration from the lone boarder in the group after dealing with lots of flat/slight uphill traversing), the skies cleared. Nate, Jay, and I discussed our options and decided to head up into CC, just to get out and do some exploring. After maybe half an hour of skinning, the view was amazing. The cirque to the West looked amazing. There was even a gigantic cornice at once spot that hung out well away from the ridgeline, and looked to be at least 50 feet off the hill below it. I suggested to Nate that he ride off the end of it, but didn’t seem too interested.

It was so warm we all had to stop and delayer.

Close to there is a section called Postage Stamp. It looked like a fun ski, so I pulled up under it and started digging a pit, as I’d been warned that it’s a face that tends to slide. A few minutes later Nate and Jay got there, and started digging pits of their own. Thanks to Nate for taking a picture that makes me look like Humpty Dumpty.

I won’t go into details other than to say there were quite a few very weak layers every several inches down to about 2′. Gently putting my shovel blade in the snow to separate a column is all it took for this section of the slab to break out.

Here’s Nate having transitioned his board back together and getting ready to dig…

…and now searching for instabilities.

Jay found the exact same thing I did in terms of weak layers and slabs. That block of snow is one layer with totally clean shears on each side.

I took this shot as we were getting ready to leave of two guys I had seen heading up Russel Peak from the pass. They had spent the morning going all the way around the cirque. I’m not sure if they were trying to drop in anywhere, but they showed up at the top of Postage Stamp as we were getting ready to leave. I don’t know where they went from there, as I didn’t want anyone bringing down those slabs on us and so we took off quickly. The ski out was through terrible trap crust and we were just glad to be done and out of it by the end.

The forecast all across the state is for heat and sun all week without so much as a trace of snow, so it could be pretty ugly next weekend. If the weather holds out, I’m looking at going and climbing something for the climb rather than the ski in a week.

Berthoud Pass was amazing yesterday. I had been planning to go up there for a few laps with Brad most of the week, and a perfectly timed storm came in. As of 6am Sunday morning, Winter Park was reporting 24″ in 48 hours. Simply unreal. I was thrilled to see that, as my Districts have become more and more rockered in recent weeks, making them perfect for the deep, wet, heavy snow that was waiting. The wind was transporting snow from place to place up high, but down in the trees it was just deep and stable.

Seconds later…

And then the inevitable…

But it’s hard not to smile after going face first into two feet of fresh snow.

A few more seconds later, and I got the best shot of the day:

It was unbelievably crowded there today. The bootpack on the west side looked like the short hike at Breckenridge, and the parking was overflowing.

Completely and totally awesome up there today, and this snow is just what we needed after a week of high pressure.
On a final note, I’d like to thank the two ladies who picked us up and gave us rides back to the top of the pass. Not at all what I expected, but we sure did a good job of cramming people and skis into those tiny cars. It must’ve been a sight to see, little cars with big skis sticking out the windows. Good times. Also thanks to the old hippy dude with the incredibly cool dog for the info, the Backcountry.com employee who was out visiting CO for all the awesome gear deals, and finally the Sweets Shop restaurant for a cheap burger and fried mushrooms at the end of the day.

It was a beautiful, warm day in the mountains today. It hasn’t snowed in a couple days but it snowed substantially over the past week and stayed cold until today. There was even a very solid layer of surface hoar on the order of an inch thick early in the morning up high. It got softer as the day went on. I was glad to be there as I hadn’t made it out to Breckenridge since early season.

Here’s me gaping it up on a kicker I’ve certainly done a better of of hitting.
Lake Chutes was phenomenal. Soft, filled in, and of course steep. A little wind up top, but nothing compared to the usual Breckenfridge gale force winds.