April 26, 2011
There was powder on the slopes
Tell me where were you?
You were sittin’ home cryin’ on the internetz
While we were participating in some face-shots
First spot we hit was the big chute
I finally got all the powder that I could take
Ahh, April. In my mind, it’s the best month of the year, by far. And while I’ve skied plenty of powder in April, I usually think of the bigger alpine lines when I think of April. That generally hasn’t been the case this April. The only trip to 14,000′ this year?- Powder on Mount Democrat. The Irwin cat skiing operation, located just West of Crested Butte, stopped recording their year-to-date snowfall last week at roughly 730″. I’m sure that number is now well over 750″, and it’s snowing heavily outside right now in the midst of a winter storm warning. This is great and all, but I have to admit that I’m ready for some time in the Alpine. It looks like I may get my wish in just a few days. In the meantime, I have to admit that some of the runs I’ve taken in the last week rank at or near the top for the entire season.
Josh Macak on The Quill:
Tom Runcie drops into Axtell’s 2nd bowl:
Sydney Fuller:
Jack Weiss:
Will Dujardin:
A quick video from the Quill and the Playground. I wish the GoPro batteries hadn’t died on my run in the playground, as it may very well have been my favorite run of the year. Vimeo did weird things to this video, but since youtube kills the audio, I’m going back to the vimeo version.
Untitled from 14erskiers on Vimeo.
I got my video together from my first day up here in Pemberton. I was skiing pretty tentatively, as I was sleep deprived and trying to get my bearings, but it was still a pretty awesome day. Check it out:
Pemberton Day 1 spines from 14erskiers on Vimeo.
While much of Colorado has been having a banner early season, Crested Butte has largely been missing out on the big dumps, as the storms keep coming on a dreaded Northwest flow. While our backountry does OK in this situation, the ski area is lucky to have a few inches. Judging by what I’ve seen in the San Juans, I guess it could be much worse. But this week, the tables have turned with my favorite wind direction of all- West, or even W-SW. The result? A huge dump already, with amounts forecasted that are hard to believe. Colorado Powder Forecast is calling for 32-64 inches between now (Saturday Eve.) and Wednesday night (and I don’t even think it’s done yet on Wed.) Of course, that’s in addition to the foot and a half plus we’ve already gotten. But hey, words are just words, unless they’re accompanied by PICS! Happy Festivus!
The crowds are awful!
Brittany:
Frank:
Bury those cars!
A word on coverage: we need every bit of this snow to get things open and in good shape. West Wall opened briefly today, so hopefully that means some other openings in the future. The most likely subjects right now would be West Wall, Horseshoe, Monument, and the High Lift. I don’t know if they’ve run ropes on Headwall and Teocalli Bowl yet, which would be the main limiting factor in terms of getting that terrain open in the near future. Let’s hope they saw this coming…
Ben Furimsky and I headed out with plans of skiing Mt. Owen today, but after getting a good look at the face we decided to change plans and head elsewhere. Owen had a huge cornice blocking access to much of the face, plus some debris and wind affected snow, so we went over some other options. We both ski Axtel a lot, and we both wanted to ski something different, but Axtel looked like it was in perfect shape and Ben had put a snowmobile track all the way to the summit the day before. With the track in, we knew we could get a couple of laps in no time at all. I usually find snowmobile laps to be more trouble than they’re worth, but this one was just too easy.
Maroon looking super caked:
Ben:
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It’s been a crazy spring in Colorado, with snow, snow and more snow that just keeps falling. While this hampers attempts at skiing the big lines that we look forward to all year long, late season powder makes things sting less… a lot less, in fact. Rob and I headed out on Friday to see just how deep it piled up, and ran into Jeremy, Susan, and Spencer, so we joined forces and decided a mission out to the playground was in order. Normally, skiing the South slopes of the Anthracites is a necessary evil to get to the playground, except apparently in April when the snow is piled deep. Susan:
Days as deep as this one are hard to come by. They might come once or twice a year in Colorado, and only in a few select spots. Utah might get as many as half a dozen days like this in a good year, and the heavy snows of Tahoe may never get like this, with the high water content and winds that are typical of that area. It takes a rare combination of no wind, light snow, no settling, and especially it takes A LOT of snow. Brittany and I were joined by Chris Webster and Pam Rice from Boulder, usual suspects Tom Runcie, Rob Dickinson, and Sydney Fuller, plus Tom’s friend Jeff, also from Boulder. Thankfully there was plenty to go around…
Photo Webster:
If I say today was another great day of skiing, it might seem like a broken record. But at least the record just keeps playing my favorite songs over and over again…
Today, I went out with Zach Berman, Rob Dickinson, and Tom Runcie to ski in the upper Slate River area. With another couple of inches overnight, conditions could best be described as “supportable blower”. On our first lap, we stayed in some thicker trees, making it hard to get many quality photos. Here’s one of Rob, however:
We decided to head to another area for our second lap, and Zach had some trouble with his skins. He made it up with a little help from his friends, though:
The terrain above us looked enticing, but se decided to save it for another snowpack, not the one we have now, that’s for sure.
Zach dropped in first off a small cliffband:
Rob followed:
Tom:
Rob finished things up with his ‘O’ face, perfectly describing the whole day:
It’s not just a saying from your favorite sticker of the 80′s, it’s the reality right now in the Crested Butte backcountry. The ski area wasn’t reporting much, but the big orographic zones are working their magic with this storm, and it was deep out there. As in the 10 second face shot deep. Enough talk, here’s the pics… (not a ton, as it’s always tough to get good shots in gladed areas.)
Rob drops in:
Brittany:
Sweet sequence of Tom:
A rare sighting of the Colorado teal mountain monkey:
All in all, the deepest day since this one last year, and shades of the epicness that was this day, the best one ever. It’s starting to feel like we might be getting somewhere…
Colorado Powder Forecast is a new website that has been getting a lot of praise, but I thought I would heap on a little more. CO skiers know how fickle our storms can be, and this website seeks to make a little more sense of it all. Check out the “education” tab, for starters, to get up to speed. I’ve learned a lot over the years reading NOAA’s forecast discussion, but this site was a lot easier to understand. Perhaps the best part of the posts is the humor, though- the last couple of posts featured cheerleaders cheering on the oncoming storm, and a Dalmatian representing how spotty the storm was. Combined with NOAA, and the Avalanche center’s forecasts, CO skiers now have a lot of tools at their disposal for weather forecasting. The link is always available on the right sidebar of this blog.
Here in Crested Butte, our snowfall is very dependent on wind direction. Storms coming straight from the South tend to drop all their snow in the San Juans. SW flow can be good, but the more “W”, the better, as true SW flow can once again favor the San Juans. W flow is the best of all, as there are no big mountains to the West of Crested Butte that can steal all the snow. NW flow produces the infamous “Crested Butte Donut Hole”, a frustrating situation when all the mountains surrounding the resort get snow, while the resort sits in a rain shadow and gets very little. Still, the backcountry can get many feet of snow out of these systems, so it’s not the end of the world. Storms out of the N can drop some snow up at Schofield Pass, but usually these storms just make it cold. Other directions are rare and don’t drop any snow around Crested Butte. That’s it for the CB Snow Forecast. This weekend’s storm is currently on track as a Westerly Flow, so cross your fingers…
