Almost 40's Blog

The family vacation: we awoke to fresh snow on the condo balcony. I'd been watching the report from Snowmass every day for about three weeks. From a dismal early December with barely any snow and almost no terrain open, the area started getting dumped on almost all month and they were opening new runs almost daily. A conspicuously absent part of the open area was Campground, a part of Snowmass known for not-too-steep black runs, but ones that are fairly long and, because it's nestled in a far away corner of the huge area, a collection of runs commonly overlooked by the powder packing hoards. This morning's ski report showed the Campground lift open for the first time. That was easy: Nick and I made a bee line for that part of the hill and found boot top to knee deep conditions everywhere on top of bottomless softness with only a handful of likeminded skiers on hand.

We skied Bearclaw a couple times and found nearly top to bottom untracked. As that collected more tracks, we took a look at the Campground run. It was barely touched. We hit that several times until it too started to get worn. Then we moved over to Slot; again, barely touched. Even the usually mundane run from the top of Sam's Knob to the restaurant for lunch yielded beaucoup powder turns for the ever diligent powder packers.

At lunch Joyce asked us if we got in maybe three runs. Ha! Nick and I totaled it up and it came to ten. For the afternoon, we got over to High Alpine and ran a couple laps through the Hanging Valley Glades, the only gated double diamond terrain open on the mountain. The rest of the double diamonds are awaiting avalanche control because of the extreme quantities of snow lately and the wind loading on top of that. We'll be waiting.

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