{"id":413180,"date":"2015-04-15T12:19:01","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T18:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=413180"},"modified":"2015-04-25T10:37:34","modified_gmt":"2015-04-25T16:37:34","slug":"two-sided-owen-tour-4-4-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2015\/04\/two-sided-owen-tour-4-4-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Sided Owen Tour 4.4.15"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On closing weekend, I normally like to ride the lifts, rather than ski the backcountry.  It only makes sense to get the last &#8220;free&#8221; vertical of the year.  But with the ski area limping to the finish line this year, good snow in the backcountry seemed like a much better choice for Crested Butte spring skiing.  We headed up towards Mount Owen with designs on the South side, something that Brittany had never skied and I hadn&#8217;t skied since the 205cm skinny ski days of the late 90&#8217;s.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6736southside.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"563\" alt=\"South face Mount Owen Crested Butte\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Joining us were Tom Runcie, exactly one year removed from a bad ankle injury, and Alex Reidman.  Despite a minor mishap along the way, we made good time towards the summit.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/6044.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"South ridge Mount Owen\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>For those of you who have never been up this ridge, here&#8217;s a quick piece of advice- stay off the snow.  The cornices here grow into massive blocks of snow, and they start literally inches away from solid ground. In any case, Tom and I continued to the actual summit and quickly decided that we would head down the North side instead.  The unexpectedly good powder conditions on the summit spine just looked too good:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/6061.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more READ MORE!--><br \/>\nI won the ro-sham-bo and got to drop in first:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/6119.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"Frank Konsella steep skiing\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/6180.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Frank Konsella steep skiing\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Without question, those were my best\/ most fun turns of the year. That speaks mostly to the average conditions we had this year. Tom was next:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/6230.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Tom Runcie steep skiing\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/503.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the ladies were gearing up for a perfect corn descent on the South side.  So far, this season has featured some of the best corn skiing we&#8217;ve had in CO in quite a few seasons.  Alex:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6322alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"595\" alt=\"alex reidman tele sking\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6361alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6417alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"605\" alt=\"Alex reidman backcountry spring skiing crested butte\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6445alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6575alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"578\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Alex, with the North side of Ruby behind:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/IMG_6609alex.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"594\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I got one photo of Brittany as she finished out this long run:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/owen-4-3-15\/525.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"551\" alt=\"Brittany Konsella skiing corn\" class=\"alignnone\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I guess I&#8217;ll have to wait for another day to ski the South side of Owen.  It&#8217;s a good run- a more consistent pitch than the North side, that&#8217;s for sure.  The skiing has been excellent this month, so don&#8217;t hesitate to keep the bikes in the garage and keep skiing.  More snow on the way this week!<\/p>\n<p>Need some gear for a big adventure?  Use this coupon:<br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/www.avantlink.com\/link.php?ml=65505&amp;p=23393&amp;pw=29053\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On closing weekend, I normally like to ride the lifts, rather than ski the backcountry. It only makes sense to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":413185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backcountry-skiing","category-crested-butte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":413187,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413180\/revisions\/413187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}