Finally Some Airtime!

After a morning of skiing newly opened terrain at Loveland Ski Area, Matt and I headed out the gate to Loveland Pass to build a pow booter. We had a spot in mind that is high up on the pass and gets little traffic, but strong winds over the last few days had turned that area into punchy windslab. So, we headed farther down, settling on probably the most popular jump spot in the front range. Its a perfect roll with a long approach and a mellow runout. Amazingly, no one had built a jump here yet this year. Thanks to Matt Teuling for the great pictures!

The snowpack is still quite thin in the northern mountains, with 18 inches of storm snow sitting on top of 12-18 inches of facets. So you have to do a lot of digging...

 

to make a pretty small jump

 

Matt set the tone by throwing his first ever backflip on snow on his first hit on the jump:

 

another backie:

 

Matt throws a big 3:

 

Another 3:

 

which I may have over-rotated a bit...

 

Matt going very large on a front flip:

 

 Flat 3:

 

What a fun day! The snowpack is finally starting to get a little deeper out there; building a jump allowed us to get out into the BC while avoiding the treacherous avy conditions that are prevalent on all steep terrain.

Summer Skiing @ Beartooth Pass 6/25 - 6/26/2011

This past weekend Matt Teuling, Jordan Scheremeta, and I drove from Boulder up to a really little ski area at the Wyoming Montana on Beartooth pass called Red Lodge International Ski and Snowboard Camp. Check out Matt's TR from our trip here. Immediately upon reaching Wyoming we encountered weather that looked like this:

I didn't think my tires were horrible until we hydroplaned on and off for the next 2 hours. Nothing like burning out on the highway going 75! Eventually we passed this very peculiar oil well located on top of a bluff, all my basic intuition tells me it would have made more sense to put the well at the bottom. Any explanations?

The drive from Boulder to Beartooth Pass is about 10 hours and due to our not particularly early departure and the fact that we had no idea where we were going to camp, stopped shortly after Cody in some beautiful and deserted national forest. An added bonus of this location was getting to watch an exciting lightning storm inside of a cloud. I tried to take some pictures of the lightning with some success, although I really struggled at getting the focus correct.

Our first camp site

Great morning views to the west as we headed towards the Beartooth Highway

Switchbacks galore!

A VERY swollen waterfall on Beartooth Pass

Driving up Beartooth Pass Saturday morning I was blown away by the terrain and snowpack. I have never been here before so I have no idea how much snow is normally up there, but o my god there was a lot of snow! It was also so different than Colorado, especially northern Colorado because there was snow everywhere and on all aspects, something you never see in the windswept northern Colorado mountains. In terms of terrain, it was so variable from really mellow fields and slopes to Indian Peaks Wilderness-esque rock face dominated terrain. You could spend years here skiing hike to lines, and if you brought a sled you could do some amazing sled access skiing.

 We arrived at the ski area around 10, signed up for the big mountain comp that was going on up there, and immediately got out to check out the ski area and inspect the venue. The ski area is located in a small steep cirque with cornice topped steep lines at the top that mellow out into the terrain park and groomer type terrain at the bottom. I think the total vertical is about 750'.

The comp ended up being a total of 2 runs with a combined score for both runs, and the added surprise of the terrain park at the bottom being included in the venue. I liked the combined run scoring method as it rewards consistency and punishes risky hucking, which is something I hate seeing in big mountain comps. However, I wasn't particularly stoked about having the park in the comp. I guess I just need to improve my park skiing!

In the end, Jordan put down 1 really good run and had his PX 18 binding explode on the other run. Matt put down a strong, fluid run on his first comp run ever, then had an extremely gnarly fall on his second run that he managed to catch on his helmet cam.

I ended up getting 4th, which I was pretty stoked about, and for the 1st time ever I remembered to turn my GoPro on before my comp run. My polarizing filter fell out making the footage very overexposed, but it was really helpful for me to review my runs to see what I can improve on. Doing big mountain comps this year has really been a learning experience for me, every time I feel like I identify some things to improve on. Reviewing my POV footage, I realized I am still hesitating a bit above the crux of my lines, which if I can improve on will really help my scoring. I can do this by better mentally preparing and planning for my whole run before dropping in.

A sundog

Matt on his first comp run

I can't remember this woman's name, but she was really good, I hope that she will be doing some of the comps this next winter.

Priceless...

So much snow!

The ski area closes at 2:30 everyday, which is nice since when combined with the long days this time of year, it allows for ample exploration at the end of the day.

Matt checks out a thundering waterfall

Sunset over Pilot and Index Peaks

More of the same 

While we setup camp and ate dinner, I shot a timelapse of this beautiful sunset. I'm pretty excited about how it turned out, feel like I'm starting to get the grasp of timelapses and I am looking forward to doing more!

I tried taking some pictures of our fire...

The second day the weather didn't really cooperate, with a mix of rain, snow, and fog. We skied some park, watched all the crazy good park rats throwing down and Matt and Jordan demoed basically the entire ON3P line.

The terrain park

Endless BC options #1

Endless BC options #2

Inbounds terrain #1

Inbounds terrain #2

Inbounds terrain #3

Overall, a great adventure with beautiful scenery, good skiing, and a big mountain comp! The ski area is really small here and 1 day skiing it is enough to ski all the terrain multiple times. However, there is soo much amazing looking backcountry, if I were to go back, I would maybe ski a day inbounds then tour for a day. Or build a roadgap...

Photos of the Week: Loveland Closing Day

Spring finally showed up this weekend, and in all honesty I'm ready for it: I'm excited for stable snow and alpine lines! With the northern mountains at 125% to 150% of average, Loveland has definitely flattened out and all the cliffs have either shrunk or disappeared altogether. But, on the plus side, all this snow makes for monster cornices! It will be interesting to watch these cornices as the weather warms and they begin to fall, enormous cornices like these could trigger correspondingly enormous slides. Matt Teuling and Josh Nunnamaker sampling said cornices:

Josh Nunnamaker

Matt Teuling

Josh Nunnamaker

Matt Teuling

Berthoud Pass Skiing - 4.27.2011

Following the 2+ feet of snow that fell in the Front Range mountains last Monday night through Wednesday morning, Erik, Matt and I went up to Berthoud Pass for a morning mission. Well aware that the April sun would soon be baking all aspects, and had already had a strong effect on southerly aspects we quickly headed towards northerly facing terrain. We skied a long lap through the 100s, then a lap on the west side, followed by two laps in the 80s. The 80s are amazing right now, its really awesome to see what kind of an effect an extremely above average year like this can have covering up lots of large, pointy rocks.

Erik Mehus - Heading to the 80s

Matt Teuling - The 100s

Matt Teuiling - The 80s

Matt Teuling - The 80s

Alex - The 100s

Skier: Mike Records     Photo: Erik Mehus - The 80s

Jones Pass Sled Skiing - 4.28.2011

As seems to be the trend lately yesterday was again quite a show. Driving down 93 from Boulder my car overheated, which has never happened to it before, although I do have quite a bit of experience with overheated cars! We made it to Golden with the heat on full blast and the windows open. Once we started going slightly uphill up Clear Creek Canyon we quickly realized Sherman was quite ill and had Matt come pick us up. This was of course complicated by the snowmobile we were towing behind Sherman. Unfortunately Matt's car has a 1 7/8" hitch and my trailer needs a 2 inch hitch, so the drive to Idaho springs was done very slowly. In Idaho Springs we switched over to Matt's truck which required finding its hitch and moving our gear into another car a third time.

As we left Idaho Spring we heard that there had been a death at Jones Pass, and as we pulled up search and rescue was leaving. Assuming it had been an avalanche death we were especially careful yesterday. When we got back to Matt's we found out that it was actually a suicide, which was even more tragic than an avalanche death.

Initially we had hoped to build a jump to session with the sled, but all the snow was heavily wind affected, fine for skiing in but rather terrifying to land in. Matt and I did some exploring in the southern basin of Jones pass, found one really really awesome jump location, but were not comfortable with the large cornice hanging over it. Also, there was significant evidence of very recent large natural avalanche activity. Given the snow conditions and stability we decided to just lap some mellow 800 ft east facing bowls in the north basin. I'm proud to say the new ski rack works really well and that we did the trickiest tandem pow sledding we have done yet. Also, the trandem set up works quite well, but we weren't able to get up everything trandeming that we could tandeming. I think that the extra weight over the back just sinks the track too much in deeper/steeper snow.

New Ski Rack!!!!

Sled Skiing!!!!

 We never gained the ridges over the zone primarily because of our concerns with avy danger, and there are definitely limited ridge access points because of the large cornices over most of the ridge line, but I think there are 2 points that you may be able to gain the ridge on a sled which would add some incredible options to sled skiing there. Without that the options are pretty mediocre.

On a final note, I am blown away by how far the snowpack is away from a typical spring snowpack. There is several feet of unconsolidated snow sitting on top of the last sun crust, and much more in places. This is compounded with the fact that the snow down low is now starting to be significantly affected by the sun and warm spring temperatures, making the push to get into the alpine all the more tempting.

The Mine Dumps - 4.15.2011

In 36  hours starting about 5 PM Wednesday nearly 2 feet of snow fell in and around Loveland ski area. Originally Josh and I had been planning on a sled assisted mini golf day on Jones Pass, but after reading about 4 foot slab development from strong winds during the storm we axed our plans and headed to Loveland. Inbounds the snow was heavier than what we have been skiing throughout the winter months, both a combination of wind effect and warm temperatures, still very good skiing though! By noon we decided to head out the gates into the surrounding sidecountry. Despite cool temperatures, as the day grew later the snow got quite sun affected, its amazing how much an effect the higher angle of the sun in springtime has on snow metamorphism!

Jordan Scheremeta

Matt Teuling

Josh Nunnamker

Jordan Scheremeta

Mike Records
Photo: Matt Teuling