{"id":423949,"date":"2017-01-25T18:39:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/?p=423949"},"modified":"2017-01-25T18:39:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T01:39:39","slug":"crested-butte-ski-season-2016-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/crested-butte-ski-season-2016-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Crested Butte Ski Season 2016-17.  So Far."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We haven&#8217;t posted too many trip reports this year.  Sadly, a big part of that is related to Brittany&#8217;s knee.  We make a good team, taking photos of each other and keeping each other motivated.  But the other part is simply how this winter has shaken out.  For a while, it din&#8217;t snow.  But when it did- it really did.  Crested Butte ended up with around 10 feet of snow in the first 2 weeks of 2017.  Needless to say, that led to some elevated avalanche conditions, including one day of the rarely seen &#8220;extreme&#8221; danger rating.  So my backcountry days have been limited thus far.  Which is fine- I like riding lifts at a fun and steep area like Crested Butte.<\/p>\n<p>Right before the snow flew, on the last day of 2016, I skied in Cement Creek, above Crested Butte South.  I was joined by Pete Sowar and Dan Herrmann, and between Pete and I, we had about 45 years of combined experience with zero trips to this area.  It just doesn&#8217;t snow that much, even though there is some nice terrain.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4173.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"cement creek backcountry skiing\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We had some great views of familiar peaks from a totally different vantage point.  Crested Butte:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4177.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Crested Butte\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Teocalli:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4193.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Teocalli mountain\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The skiing was&#8230; interesting.  Snow that looked soft was hard, and snow that looked hard was soft.  And the base wasn&#8217;t quite there.  Still, here&#8217;s a couple of photos of Pete:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4178.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"pete sowar crested butte backcountry\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more READ MORE!--><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4212.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"skiing in cb south\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Then the storm hit.  Buildings couldn&#8217;t even take it:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/71008.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" alt=\"chimney collapse due to snow\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Classic Crested Butte buildings looked even better with all the snow:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/618a.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"800\" alt=\"union congregational church crested butte\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/553.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"old rock library\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4937.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"elk ave\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/619.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"800\" alt=\"snow tunnel\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/600.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"800\" alt=\"huge snowman\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The storm was not your typical storm, with temperatures that stayed right around the freezing point.  It even rained at times in Gunnison.  When it did clear, the weather continued to remind me of my years in British Columbia, complete with low cloud decks.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/1120c.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" alt=\"Whetstone mountain\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Eventually I made it out to one of my favorite tours with one of my favorite partners, John Jasper.  The clouds were still hanging tough:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4215.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"crested butte backcountry\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4222.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"Crested Butte with clouds\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A heli flew by a few times- it sounds like it was MSP getting a bunch of cool footage that we&#8217;ll hopefully see soon.  If chimneys couldn&#8217;t take the snow, it shouldn&#8217;t be too surprising that the trees couldn&#8217;t handle the snow load either.  Trees were down everywhere:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4216.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"downed trees too much snow\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But the skiing was good.  JJ:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4237.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"crested butte ski season 2016-17\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-content\/gallery\/early-winter-2016-17\/4270.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" alt=\"John jasper skiing\" class=\"alignnone size-medium\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s about it.  I&#8217;m looking forward to the next week of drier weather, and hopefully a few tours.  The only question will be how reactive the surface hoar that is now buried will continue to be.  Looking forward to more of this winter, either way.<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/www.avantlink.com\/link.php?ml=455698&amp;p=23393&amp;pw=29053\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can make lemonade out of lemons.  Or this year, you can make beer out of grain, hops, yeast, and water.  Which is how this year is going so far.  It&#8217;s beer, not lemonade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":423950,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-423949","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\/423949","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=423949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":423952,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423949\/revisions\/423952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/423950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/14erskiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}