Friday, February 18, 2011

Ski History

Interested in finding out about Colorado's ski history?  Looking for lost resorts and possible back country options?  Colorado Ski History is a great place to get started!

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Oh Snowmass...how we love thee

Look if you haven't heard me say it before, you've obviously never read my blog.  I love Snowmass Village, CO.  I love the mountain, I love Goodfellows pizza, I love to bike there in the fall and enjoy the JAS concert series on Labor Day.  So of course we once again got Aspen Classic ski passes this year.  Those allow us 5 wonderful days of skiing any of Aspen/Snowmass's 4 mountains for the low low price of $250.  What?  Everyone has their hobbies; this is our winter one. 

This past weekend we headed over for another 2 days of skiing at Snowmass Village.  We've skied at Aspen Mountain and at Buttermilk and neither compares (for us) to Snowmass.  The territory you can cover is massive!  Because of this, the number of people you see on some runs is countable on one hand.  It's crazy to be at such a huge, popular resort, and yet take video footage where there are no other people on the run except you and your significant other. 



The runs at Snowmass vary; they have a great amount of blue (intermediate) terrain, but also easy beginner runs, awesome groomed advanced runs, bump runs, and extreme "sidecountry" terrain too.  This past trip we learned about a new area (on the far right in the map above) called Campground.  I know the map is huge, but I wanted you to be able to actually SEE the runs.  This was, obviously, taken from the Aspen/Snowmass Website.  All of the runs off of Campground are black, so that right there limits the number of people who spend time there.  Both days we found awesome powder and the runs like Slot and Campground really weren't bad at all.  Mostly just fun rolling runs with a few steep faces.  Still, if you're unsure, ski the top part of the slot down to the Sam's Knob lift.  That will give you an idea of the runs.  If you haven't skied black runs, don't ski there!
View from the Campground lift--Capitol Peak is out there somewhere!

From there we headed left towards the Big Burn lift, where we always make a few runs.  This weekend (and I'm mixing the days together here) we checked out Whispering Jesse and were disappointed to find it crowded!  No matter, we skied towards it via the black Garrett Gulch and had a blast in the trees.  After that it was Sheer Bliss over to the Alpine Springs lift.  We headed up that one for lunch at Gwyn's (on Sunday).  We're still more fond of Cafe Suzanne off of the Elk Camp lift.

We headed straight for the High Alpine lift once jumping off the Alpine Springs lift and made a few runs on The Edge where we found more untouched snow!  Lucky us!  From there we took Turkey Trot over to Elk Camp where, on Saturday, we almost missed lunch!  It was after 2 when we showed up at Cafe Suzanne and there were just a few burgers left under the heaters.  We were having so much fun we forgot to eat.

It was getting blizzardy, but we skied a few of our favorite end-of-the-day runs off of Elk Camp:  Bear Bottom and Sandy Park.  Some of the "expert" black sidecountry terrain dumps out into the wonderfully mellow, rolling Sandy Park. 

After all of this fun, we headed back on Adams Avenue to the Village.  We skied right over by Goodfellows Pizza, kicked off our skis, locked them, and headed in for a giant slice of veggie pizza and beer.  What a perfect weekend!