This has been an exciting week. Last weekend I found a bargain on a pair of skis I’d been eyeing for ski mountaineering season, and ordered them. On Monday, I ordered a pair of Dynafits – reportedly the most amazing backcountry bindings ever made. It all arrived Wednesday, and was in the shop that afternoon. Friday night the skis were ready. Saturday I got a pair of new skins trimmed for the new skis. And today, I was blown away by their performance. My skis with bindings are half the weight of my old setup, the touring performance is spectacular, and they ski better than any other binding I’ve ever been on (including the Dukes). It’s simply amazing.

Today was another fun day up on Berthoud Pass. The drive up was quicker than expected, and I was up at the pass ready to go about 7:45. Franz was running late, so I tagged along with a couple guys in the parking lot most of the way up Russel. At 9 they turned to head to the top, and I dropped into the trees to get back to the road, so that I could meet up with Franz. They were getting ready as I got back to the top of the pass, and we headed out.

Cast of Characters:

Hans
Brandon, and Hans’ girlfriend Mel in the background
We leisurely skinned up to Russel, enjoying the incredibly warm weather. It was so warm that I dropped two base layers at the car after the first lap, opened the vents on my pants, and strapped my jacket to my pack. Once we made the top of the ridge, we poked around and found a fun north-facing line off the bench. Just before we dropped, we saw two guys skiing down in the cirque together, ripping under the cornice and hucking a couple small rocks. We all thought out loud “wow that looks like fun!” immediately followed by “…that’s not a smart way down.” Keep in mind that the CAIC warned specifically to beware anything near cornices today.

Brandon ripping:
Mel enjoying the soft snow:
Hans at the top of the line, with Volkswagen-sized chunks of cornice debris in the foreground. I’m glad I wasn’t underneath when that fell:
And Hans tearing it up:
Immediately to the north from there is XYZ Chutes. We went down Z, a fun line to get to the trees in the 80s. Hans led off with style:
Then Mel threw some snow around:
From here it’s into the trees of Current Creek and eventually out to the road. I had a blast on my freshly waxed/scraped/brushed skis. It turns out Hans had never waxed his skis, and the warm snow did something I’ve never seen before – it stuck to his bases, and got thicker as he kept moving. He had a few inches of snow on his base when Brandon and I turned and made our way to the road.
It was nearly 1pm at this point, so we called it a day. I was absolutely amazed by the performance of the skis and bindings today. I can’t wait to take them out again.

This past weekend, I went to Beaver Creek with Nate and Andrew for a little bit of bluebird skiing, despite it having been dry for a few days (although BC had 9″ in the past week). We pulled into the lot at the same time, geared up, and took the shuttle to the first lift. The views in the Gore are amazing.

Ace proceeded to take us through a shortcut that he said was NFS land and thus no problem to ski through. A patroller at the bottom disagreed, but was nice enough to simply inform us rather than pull our passes for the week, as it was an honest mistake (which won’t be repeated). Feeling lucky, we headed towards Stone Creek so Andrew could steeze it up off some small cliffs.

Count it! Oh wait, no, don’t. Picture of the day:

Air to double-eject.

Sick!

After a couple laps there, we made our way out one of the backcountry gates at the top of a lift (which is right next to a patrol shack) for a short hike. As we turned on our beacons, a couple patrollers commended us for having all the proper gear, saying that most who head out the gates go without any of it. I’ve never been chastised or commended by patrol before, and to have both in the same day was a little ironic.

Nate:
Andrew:
The elusive point, captured in the wild (I missed a simultaneous double-point while still inbounds. It was amazing!):

Ace, contemplating his next drop:
Here we go!
Count it!
No, don’t count it. My buffer filled before the landing (due to shooting in RAW at 5fps) but like the first one, it was not successfully landed. A couple runs later and it was off to the bar for a couple beers:
Where this little guy was hanging out and being photogenic for me:
All in all, a great day. I can’t wait to do it again.

Shocking, I know. Went up skiing with Nate today despite a near-total lack of snow in the past month. I didn’t mind riding a chair, as I had several weeks of earning my turns. We made it up in time to catch the first chair. I’ve been there when the chairs start spinning countless times, but I’ve never actually been on the first one to go.

As is to be expected when it hasn’t snowed substantially for a month, conditions were less than ideal (though not terrible). Due to the wind, Zuma didn’t open until around noon. A couple quick laps through there were plenty as the whole thing had baked in the sun for weeks and it was hard as a rock.

The snow was far better on the front side, particularly off to the west end of Pali.

Until next time…

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.

It’s official, Winter is here and in full force! I spent the day with some friends at A-Basin yesterday for my 6th day of the season. It was very cold – -3F at the base mid-day, and so windy they shut down everything but the main lift at the bottom. There was only one black run open, so I lapped that for the entire day. I’m sore today as I aired a five-footer to flat about a dozen times, and had a good crash through some trees that had a couple people shouting and asking if I was ok. Got a couple photos…nothing spectacular.

And a photo from last weekend, driving on I-70 through town:

Christmas morning will be spent at Vail, and the snow is supposed to continue all the way through then!