Steamboat 12/21/07

Yesterday I watched the storm roll in pretty early but I chose not to ride since I knew today would be a much better day on the mountain. The best part about today was being 2 hours ahead on work. So I chose to wait, I let everyone this morning get fresh tracks in powder but throughout the day it kept dumping snow…so I knew the morning shredders would be off the hill and the snow being dumped on Steamboat all day would fill in their tracks. Boy was I right…the mountain was empty in the afternoon, still fresh powder since it snowed all day and it was awesome!

One thing about living in Steamboat, riding the mountain a lot…is you can always find fresh powder. Even if the groomed runs are bumped out and no powder to be found…there is powder on the mountain. I’ll let the tourists stick to the groomers while I find the goods. Today was the perfect example.

In the last 48 hours we received 18 inches of new snow…however on the hill, there were spots where it seemed easily 2 feet of new snow. I was riding in snow up higher than my knees. I knew today was a pow day…so it was K2 Gyrator day on the mountain. The first run took some getting used to the board again since I’d been riding a stiffer Never Summer.

I headed up the gondola and made my way over to Storm Peak where I took my first warm up laps through the trees. At first thought I was gonna hit the trees to the left of Storm but decided they were already bumped out. So I headed farther left and found some awesome turns in powder. There were some flat spots so had to stay on trails of others to keep my speed but once out of them…it was some awesome turns. I didn’t encounter another person at all in the trees on the first run.

Since friends had gone up for first tracks in the morning, I rode by myself and had a great day with my music.

I rode up Storm Peak again but this time dropped into the run heading to Morningside where even there on the side of the runs were awesome powder stashes. Headed up Morningside chair for the first time this season which had some awesome spots below but most were already rode out.

I didn’t want to hit up the Chutes since they looked bumped out from below so I dropped into the Ridge which even with some bumps still had good turns to be made.

It was awesome to be riding most of that side of the mountain totally alone. Every now and then I’d see someone in the distance. On one of the flat powder trails, I came up behind a guy enjoying a nice smoke break so I passed him and went on my way.

Some of my best runs looked like this, just open sunny blue skies with sparkling powder all around me. Got these shots on some of the last runs of the day.

Since I was riding alone, I tried my best to take this shot of me riding.

Storm Peak closed down and BC as well so headed down to Thunderhead to keep making turns. Got this sweet view at the end of the day looking up towards Storm Peak and most of the terrain I rode today.