Check out Wil’s post @ 120 Days of Powder: Day 52: Lost…

Had a great bluebird day on Saturday riding at Steamboat. No fresh snow for a while, it was very icy in most spots. The trees and the backside of the mountain seemed to hide the best snow. Around noon, I met up with Wil @ 120 Days of Powder and his crew for some backcountry adventures. We took morningside up and started hiking out toward St. Pats. They took me into some sweet terrain and nice soft snow. I was amazed that there was soo much pow around after just a short hike. We did some laps here and hit a tight little gap booter. Wil was a great tour guide — back in bounds we hit up the Dark Forest for some tree jib action. We decided to go try and find this boulder field that Chris and Wayne had spotted the previous day, along with a really nice open meadow filled with pow and aspen trees. This requires us to drop out of the resort through the backcountry access gate, not sure which one. We traversed a good distance and we were rewarded with super dry deep powder. I had no clue where we were but the shredding was awesome… Ended up stranded along a cliff band of around 30-60 foot, we couldn’t get close enough to see over. This was the beginning of the trouble, no line down.. we were forced to boot pack back up the chute and into a band of trees. After an hour or two of slogging through rotten snow, we were able to hit the upper traverse line and head the opposite direction back to the resort… or so we thought. At least we were away from the cliff band and eminate doom, it was pretty scary scambling back up this face watching the sluff rush past into never never land. Farther down, Wil and I found some more sweet powder lines and we thought we were heading back near the resort. We ended up at Fish Creek Falls and had to hitch hike back into town then back to the resort. Good fun.

Location: Berthoud Pass - West Summit - Plunge & Lift Gulley
02/18/06 - Mary Jane - Around 11am things really started to soften up and get fun. Ran into my buddy Mark who I hadn’t seen in a few years, we decided to hangout the rest of the day and kill some moguls. Surprised at how few people were out for the holiday weekend, we didn’t wait more then a minute in any lift line. Sunny and bluebird most of the day. Temps high 20s.

02/18/06 - Berthoud Pass - West Summit - On the way up to Mary Jane, I was very early as usual and decided it might be a good idea to hike a few laps up the west summit of Berthoud and hit the steeps visible from the road. A couple of inches of new snow the night before made it a dust on crust situation but the riding was still good. I did 4 laps on the steeps, fresh almost spring like turns each time. Sun was shining and snow was getting looser and looser each lap. Overall, snow was very stable in the morning on north facing 35 degree+ slopes. Left to finish the day at Mary Jane. 10:30am

02/12/06 - Eldora Mountain Resort - It was bluebird and zero wind, I was looking for a day at the resort away from the I70 madness. Eldora is a quick 30 minute drive up from Boulder, 700 acres of shred and lots of snow. I was greeted with a 65″ base and very quick lift lines. The sun started to loosing up the snow and it turned out to be a great day riding the lifts and listening to the ipod. Can’t beat Eldora for snowboarding close to Boulder. Next year I might get a season pass to this spot.

Mike, Alex and I got up to the Peter Rabbit hut after work on Thursday. The sky was clear and it was pretty warm. We geared up and started hiking in the wood and beer. Mike was already at the hut getting things in order for our camp out. We started drinking and cooking dinner when the clear skies faded and a small storm front came through. Wind and snow, plus very cold temperatures - we hoped it would dump and make for good riding on Friday. Outside temp was around -10 degrees and we had a nice fire raging inside the hut to keep us warm. A few hours later the fire ran out and we awoke to freezing temps inside the cabin. We started up another fire, cooked breakfast and planned the days attack. Still windy and snowing we set off to hike up to moonlight bowl and find some turns. High winds on the ridges kept us lower and we ended up doing some laps in the north facing trees behind the hut. Mike and Alex stayed and camped out Friday night, with the fading weather and conditions I opted to leave Friday and head back out Sunday for a full day of riding. Overall the trip was a lot of fun and a success, we got some sweet winter camping done, good backcountry powder lines, some drinking and a few good pics.

 
After a good amount of drinking things go quickly out of control and out comes the voodooo! You must dance and praise the cabin voodoo or all your backcountry trips will parish.

The voodoo gods reward us after proper dance is performed with shred and deepness. Photos: Alex M. & Mike S.

 

 
Saturday we had a huge crew up at Loveland Pass shuttling in the monster van. By 10am, we had 9 people pilled inside doing laps. The pass had been closed for 3 days, while almost 2 feet of fresh snow dropped. 6:30am the pass was stilled closed, we knew it would be worth the wait. Around 7:40am the pass opened up and we hit our first few laps. It was pretty much one of the best days I’ve seen in years at Loveland Pass. It was soo deep most of the terrain looked different, we had 3 or 4 laps of completely untracked deep deep powder. The sun was starting to shine and things couldn’t get much better. We made our way over to the G drop and eveyone hucked off. Mike (vangina crew) hit it first and had a completely untouched landing, Mike (scheer) dropped next, then myself, then Mike (of heavywinter) hit it. The crowds started to build so we decided to move on and hit some other areas. We dropped sheep creek, first and second tri’s as well. Over at the cabin, there was enough snow to jump off the roof, so we did that a few times too. Photos: Alex M.