jp's blog

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.

Last Saturday I started off at LP again super early, with a couple inches of new snow I knew it would get tracked fast. Around 6:45am I got my first lift up and decided to take one of the less traveled lines back down to the east portal switchback. Made my way over to the Elevator drop and hucked myself off, landing was ok but filled with crater holes from previous hucksters. Did laps over and over and even found some stashes of pretend-a-fresh way off the beaten path. I was pretty surprised because the crowds were not really out in force today. Around 10am I met up with this skier named Aaron, we decided to get a lift up to the summit and hike back onto the ridge. After 20 minutes of hiking we were near the top of Widowmaker ready to drop, lots of good snow and untracked pow up above treeline. Be careful with the Avy danger. We boot packed up the couloirs a few times for some sweet turns down.

Sunday I rode up at Arapahoe Basin and it was pretty sick. The lower East Wall is open and the shredding is tight. Lots of drops and rock bonks, the bowls above treeline had some nice loose snow and there are tons of cornices to huck off of. I rode with Krissy for the 2nd half of the day and we tore up the moguls on Pali face. Tons of rocks over here, I'd stay closer to mid-mountain. I gotta say, Krissy f-ckking kills it in the moguls. Everyone always looks at me stupid when I say I love the moguls. Spent some time in the terrain park early in the day and they have a few features up and going. When you first enter the park you have a choice of a small boot or a small shotgun rail. A bit farther down you can hit a nice hip jump or longer trap box on the left. Once you get into the Lower Rail Yard you have a bunch of boxes to choose from, a long shotgun style rail and a bunch of kickers. Abasin crowds weren't very bad at all, but the traffic on the drive home was insane.

Yesterday I decided to take the day off after watching this storm on the front range. Watching it all day it didn't really look like it was going to pan out and most of the weather reports had it breaking up and heading south. Up at 5:30am Wednesday I was hitting refresh over and over waiting for the snow report website to update. WP/MJ was reporting 14" at the base at 6am, and it was snowing hard. I got in the truck and went toward the pow, upon arrival at MJ I was pretty much the first car in the lot. Got my gear ready and started boot packing up under the Challenger lift. The pow was super deep, the kind where you forget what board your riding cause you don't see it much of the day. After hiking til 8:45, I dropped into Sleeper to completely untracked powder, made my way back down to Challenger lift and got second chair. Rode the front side of MJ most of the day, knee deep most of the day everywhere. It was snowing very hard all day and by 2pm we had another 6" fresh snow. After a quick lunch break I was over at Timberline doing laps in the trees, the snow here was even deeper. So deep sometimes you'd choke on that shit. Loveland Pass Saturday.