Colorado Backcountry: Loveland Pass

Again this weekend I meet Mike up at LP hella early to get some lines in before the mass crowd of gapes. We got to the east portal switch back around 6:30am and started hitching. We must have gotten 10 or so laps in before anyone else started to show up. We sessioned some of the hidden stashes all morning and once the crowds waiting for pickups started to get too big we shuttled using Mike's truck. Ret, Mike and I spent another 2 hours doing laps where ever we wanted switching off the driving. The snow wasn't the best, but we were still able to find plenty of hidden fresh. Around noon, Mike and I broke off to dig a snowpit near the Sheep Creek avalanche path above Loveland basin. We dug a 8 ft deep pit roughly 11,600ft, 32degree slope angle, N-NE. We did shear and compression tests and found a very weak layer roughly 8-12" before the surface. Many layers below this, including almost 3 feet of depth hoar. We saw many skier triggered slides and natural point release slides around the Widowmaker and Loveland Ridge. We decided to stay around treeline. Mike took off after we dug the pit and I did some more laps up on LP.

Sunday the plan was to meet up on BP and do some lines in the mines and vortex. Ret failed to show, so the backup plan was to meet at LP for some laps. Mike and I got to LP around 6:45am and it was closed due to avalanche blasting. We waited at the base for a good 45 minutes watching them blast the seven sisters chutes. At least 12" of new snow the night before we were ready for some serious pow. Once the pass was open we were surprised to find only ourselves riding. We put our beacons on and avy gear and decided to do laps just below treeline. The snow was sick, light blower pow from the night before, we had lap after lap of untracked pow. It was good to see JHBluebird and Fejj up there as well. Pictures coming soon..

Also some kids were up there building the most sketch road gap jump i've ever seen, i got way bored of waiting for them to hit the thing so i don't know if anyone got hurt or not. The jump was about 3 times too small for the gap, i took some pictures. Anyone else see this shit??