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Topic: 2-5-07, Loveland Pass/Enchanted Mesa, Colorado (Read 1284 times)
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MW88888888
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Posts: 419
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Day 24
2-5-07
North and South Bowls, Loveland Pass, Colorado
Enchanted Mesa Bowl, Boulder, Colorado
Yin-Yang Part Two
Twelve hours after returning home for my bags and to feed the cats, I was driving along High-70 in my rental car chugging soda and eating fast food. “Fueling up”, for my foray into the Death Zone of the Colorado high country.
I’d called two nights earlier informing friends of a surprise Colorado trip for work, and two friends were able to meet me at the Pass for some “choice” Colorado skiing. They arrived with barrels of AK-47 and Blueberries, and I spent the afternoon dazed and confused. It was a good thing. I needed something to forget about the skiing. It was horrendous.
I flee Washington State for a change of scenery and snow conditions after weeks of hard pack, and we step into the gale at the top of the Pass, walk the short distance to the snow and drop in - to find conditions I am horribly used to. First run was on the Knoll and while it wasn’t breakable crust, it wasn’t Continental Powder either. It was like a Breakable Crust-Lite, with half the calf burning. In some spots it was still soft, and where skied off it was high and dry chalk - never ice - only an annoying, thick, rotten mank. My snowboard would have ate it up. Or at least would have had an advantage. My skis endured, and I realized as I swooshed back and forth in the super fun exit stream bed, that I and my friends in Colorado were truly snow snobs.
We figured the wind was the enemy, which today coming out of the NW at 40 mph. It was cold and blustery in both the North and South bowls. Second run we went low in on the south side , down through the trees just above A-basin and planned on working the Super Bowl crowd returning from A-Basin and Keystone, crowds of whom would be hightailing to socials in Denver. Good plan, but poor conditions even down in the sheltered trees were the turning point – nowhere on the Pass would we find snow that wasn’t affected by wind, sun or temps or a combination of the three. Sean and Smith spoke of upslope monster storms and powder skiing from their backyards in Boulder in the past month. And now, as the day warmed up, the corn snow of the Front Range and their talk of Town and Country shots became very enticing.
One more run down the North side, this time in the old reliable Tube, and I was done for, in full attack mode in the manky slop, working for every turn. I was beat anyway, why not flee to lower climbs? Traveling from sea level to ski at 11,000’ always makes me easy to talk down. Fifteen hundred miles of air travel and two hours of driving, and I make three runs off the top in wind scoured conditions. But I relished the sunny drive ahead in my shiny new rental and we’re off to the foothills for part two of my Colorado ski holiday.
***
The drive up into the Flatirons from Boulder took a turn toward the exotica as we rounded the sweeping turns near the top and encountered wind driven snowdrifts, waist high. It looked like we were still at the Pass. As we cruised into the Park, places where I had ran from my apartment many years before were huge snow drifts, driveways and shopping centers now alien landscapes. All the side streets of Boulder were snow covered. The huge open bowls of the Flatirons a rolling canvas of white above town. For once, even the foothills looked ski able.
Sadly, the fickle Colorado altitude played a final trick on us as we neared the Boulder valley. An inversion kept a chilly dense air over the foothills, and the fierce wind kept the temps down. The result, we had to settle for 600 VF of wide open bowl skiing between the agave bushes, car shuttling into the adjacent neighborhoods, running laps in the Flatirons, all on wind scour. What it lacked in snow conditions made up for with strangeness. In the 7 years I lived on Boulder I never did ski the Flatirons parks. The foothills, yes, but never the signature skyline. Until now.
The snow ended on my bachelor ski weekend as it began, deep and yet unappealing. Sometimes we ski just because that's what we do. A yin and yang of ski life – good snow conditions, bad location. Good company, bad snow conditions. That’s life, isn’t it?
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danhelmstadter
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Posts: 313
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nice! we recently got a blast of snow/wind, things are pretty sketchy; a couple days ago a skier was caught and swept into a tree up there in the loveland pass area. im in the sangre de cristo area for at least a few days, are you still around?
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MW88888888
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Posts: 419
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Nope - now in Vermont. Perhaps more on that later.
I'd like to hear what you've been up to in CO, though.
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