Colorado Backcountry: Loveland Pass

Friday 6am, we found ourselves kicking it with the plow driver from CDOT waiting for the pass to open. He made his way up to blast the seven sisters chutes and the dude ski'd his way down. 9" inches new snow we wre stoked to shred. Around 7am the pass opened and we started to hitch. The shit was deep, the storm dropped a good amount of new snow and it continued throughout the day. We stayed below tree line and had unlimited fresh all day. We also met up with our new plow driver friend for some laps. He was a skier and could shred it up gnar. AKD and I went over to Loveland Resort around 1pm to check out some of the lines off chair 8. Pretty sick over here too, pretty of fresh still around and lots of lines in the trees. The terrain park was kinda whack, most of the rails were set up all crooked and shit. It was wierd. The wall ride was the best feature for sure. We got bored here fast and went back over to the pass to hitch. Got plenty of rides all afternoon until we left for keystone around 7pm. Keystone was alright, hit a few night lines then went straight for the park. The park setup is ill, but it was hella icy from kids hitting shit all day. Tons of jibs and sick jumps. The A51 terrain park lift makes laps easy.

LP Deep/Tree Jib [Video Clip/Sound.wmv]
Saturday morning I got to the pass pretty early again. The wind and some 4" new snow through the night made it another killer day. I crashed at Jordan's and Sarah's the night before so it was kick ass not driving. Started hitching and rode the normal lines til it started to get crowded. Some of the more less traveled areas of the pass were off the hook. No one around, tons of fresh lines and powder from the new storm. After lunch, I started the traverse line out to the ironing board and found some dope shit. On the way down you have a nice step up starting to form, followed by a huge hip built into a lot of wind blown snow. Also there were a few kicker lines into this gulley, with a short but floating launch out. Down at the jib area the tree shit is going off, the Malay kinker is setup. The rainbow isn't, so that might be a project for this weekend. Also, the CAIC and the US FOREST Service were at the summit of Loveland trying to educated all the gapers on avalanche safety. This is a good thing because rarely does anyone out here have the slightest idea about avalanche conditions or safety. We decided to stay below treeline and ride without beacons, this is a risk. Most people were hiking the Widowmaker and hucking a huge cornice. No beacons. This broke and moderate slide came down, almost catching someone.

Sunday the snow was starting again, with huge dumps predicted. Colorado is going off right now. Rode the pass all day again, fresh was harder to find but it's snowing hard again. By TUESDAY Loveland is at 80" base with 19" in the last couple of days. Something like 30" in the last 10 days. So busy shredding pow the pictures suck and have no time to make blog updates.