Colorado Backcountry: Berthoud Pass & Loveland Pass

Photo: JP Location: Loveland Pass - Idiot's Cornice
1/27/06 Friday - Loveland Pass - Idiot's Cornice - Got up to the Loveland Pass lot early on Friday and found 5" fresh or so. I took my time and geared up, hitch hiking was pretty slow. Did some laps around second tri's, rode a nice layer of pow on top of the huge base. First tri's and deadwood are even better, around 11am more people started to show up and I met up with a guy named Jameson. Zero wind and a beautiful bluebird day we decide to hike the ridge and drop Idiot's Cornice. After the 40 minute hike out the ridge toward Loveland Ski resort we were at the cornice and looking to drop in. I made my way out to the cornice and started to make snowboard cuts and get a large chunk to drop. This huge chunk I cut dropped down into the bowl below with lots of sluff, no slide. We hike up further to a nice untouched area of the cornice and proceeded too huck off. 4 laps later it is all tracked out and we had large smiles all around.

1/29/06 Sunday - Berthoud Pass - Current Creek - Mike, AKD and I met up early at the current creek drainage to find a nice spot and build a booter. The weather today wasn't very good, lots of wind and blowing snow. We hiked back into the safety of the trees and found a sweet spot above the Peter Rabbit hut. The booter was small with a huge powder field landing. At the run out you had multiple snow covered rocks and pillows to jib or slash. We killed the landing and decided to film a few shots dropping off the various rocks and features around. Around 1pm we dicided we'd had enough of the wind and snow, rode out to the cars and hit the rode. The last two days we probably averaged about 4 miles hiking total above 11,000ft.

Berthoud Video - 01.29.06 (right click - save as)