We all we headed up to Vail as they reported 4 of fresh...Greg Merz did some research here and got some great advice on parking and taking the Golden Peak Chair. Got on first chair, no one there. The ride up the chair didn't look too promising, looked more like NE hardpack. Once we went over the ridge and up, things started to look much different. getting off the chair the snow was soft and pretty light as well. You could see there was much more than 4"--- 6-8" was more like it. Riding up the Northwoods chair you could see some great terrain, nearing the top, looking over towards Blue Sky and the bowls, it was all untracked powder! We made a couple warmups on Northwoods and had the opportortunity to play around on the Hellbents on soft groomed stuff. What a blast.
Heading over to Sun up Bowl we found a good 2-3 hours of untracked powder and broken lines. Just too much fun. We worked over to Tea Cup. Greg and I dropped in on Dragons Teeth. The snow at this point was pretty baked and underneath were hard bumps, It made for an interesting run! THe HB's really crushed this stuff and made it actually fun! Gary Traversed over to about mid point of China Bowl and dropped in, it was the only line coming down for about 300 yards, very cool. (yes pics to come). We skied down and found our way up high and took a nice tree-line along Shangra-la Glades to the bottom of the Orient Express lift only to learn that it was closed! Nothing posted on top.... Hmm,
Had some lunch outside in the warm sun (all of got burned) Went back to the Tea cup bowl but this time it was pretty much wet cement, the Hellbents were very good in this stuff. We worked back over to the front side to find som North Facing runs. Ended up about 2, we were spent! Headed over to BackCountry Brewery for Wings, Nachos and some killer IPA. Good day! Pics to come.
