Spring

This tag is associated with 2 posts

Endless Spring Skiing The Coast Range

Posted by brenlawrence ⋅ April 22, 2012 ⋅ Leave a Comment

Spring Skiing, Arapahoe Basin Style

Posted by brenlawrence ⋅ April 4, 2012 ⋅ Leave a Comment

The snow’s not falling very much lately, but that doesn’t mean there’s not still plenty of skiing and riding to be done! Arapahoe Basin, located just under and hour outside of 75 degree sunny Denver, is still holding their own despite this horrible season.

I can’t say that I was expecting much heading up to Summit County, especially after last month’s heartbreak when I decided to spend the day searching for any last morsels of pow at Keystone. We’ll keep it short: Groomers and gravel.

Sitting at the base of the mountain

I pulled up to the beach and I wasn’t expecting any killer drops on the east wall. No tree runs or hucking cliffs in the Montezuma Bowl…in fact, I wasn’t even expecting access to be open for the Montezuma. And of course, I was right. But what I WAS expecting was nice, soft corn turns on a blue bird sunny colorado day, and I couldn’t have gotten any better conditions delivered straight to me.

Sitting in the parking lot I scrambled through my bag of goodies out of my Northface backpack and decided, “Liners or full gloved…puffy, or flannel..” and eventually decided to ditch it all for the tshirt and outer shell. It was too nice not to. We worked our way up to the non-existent lift lines and took our first run headed straight to Ramrod.

Headed to Ramrod!

I’d been DYING to get my skis on! And now was my time. I pointed my faithful ski partner (Kellie, fiance), in the right direction and we were gone!! Warm 50 degree air in my face, nice deep edging, a little pop here and there and it was a race to the bottom! Man, had I been waiting for a moment like that for far too long. Wizzing past trees, in and out of side trails, past the sideline spectators, the jibbers, the moms, the dads, the little kids with their leashes on so they don’t Jeff Gordon down the hill with their teachers faithfully guiding their turns down the hill…I needed that.

At the bottom I was eventually met by my skiing comrade with smiles all over. The feeling of rushing down a mountain on top of a sheet of frozen water can do something to you that very little things in life have the power to do. The day continued with more runs, more bloody marys, and the best attempt we could make to improve our goggle tans for the days to follow.

The days of sinking to our waists in 3 feet of powder may be over for the season, but that still doesn’t mean we’re hanging our planks up for the year just yet.