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went up to BP to look around on saturday and dont waste your energy! the place is far from filled in. MOST north facing aspects where ripping to the ground and snowpack was super sketch and shallow most other places. mountains have jsut enough snow to look rideable but beware! Ended up riding the split track down. they need at least 2 feet for it to be resonable safe out there. LOTs of people out splitting though! still had fun!



Travis: what up man? how was your summer! lets get in touch and start touring soon!

Just got messaged from a friend who does the snow reports @ Steamboat.... Another 9" @ mid and 12 @ the summit. No rest day today.

Toured 3 days last weekend. 2 in Silverton area, one in Wolf Creek Pass. Silverton had about 3' of base, and WC 4'. Got some large whoomphing at WC, but no avalanches where we were. Stuck to trees and lower angle stuff. Silverton, rode semi steep terrain on NE aspects, but kept clear of most problem areas. CT results were CT15Q3 in the trees in Silverton. Saw a semi large avalanche on top of Irenes slide path as well, that was caused from ski cuts previous.

Still good to be back out.





Shrinking a photo from facebook was a pain. But I basically made a smaller window, right clicked and said view image in new window, then took that URL.

try right clicking on the image as its displayed while viewing the image in facebook, then copy the image url.

Went out to RMNP on 12/21 to scope conditions. Ended up in Chaos Creek. A bit of a challenge to get up there in early season snow, trying to avoid terrain that may slide. We got lots of pockets to collapse, but nothing moved on us. Up higher conditions were difficult at treeline with a funky windslab/breakable crust. The terrain park area was the best snow, though its still pretty thin.






chaos couloir

Went out to East Portal yesterday. Snow is starting to add up in the trees above 10,000'. Depth around 2-3' making the riding pretty enjoyable. I have yet to find the perfect long tree run around there though. South Boulder Creek trail has decent coverage for skinning and the descent, which was nice and fast in the cold temps. Skinned up to Heart Lake and then the bowl to the North of 12,251 (Heartbeat) and went up its north ridge to the summit. Found a ride-able line down the east ridge on firmish wind affected before dropping down the unnamed creek drainage. No obvious instabilities but I managed my terrain fairly conservatively.


Haystack


Old slab on SE face of Heartbeat


Tasty treats


Iceberg Lakes


E ridge of 12,251'




James Peak

HFT, nice big tour. You can still see remnants of the crown (top left of your Iceberg Lakes photo) from the big natural above Iceberg Lakes from 2 weeks ago.


Interesting that you got decent turns off that peak (Heartbeat?), I was on the peak (about same aspect and slope angle but about 600 feet lower) between Crater Lakes and Iceberg on 12/29, and it was super wind hammered/bullet proof.

Got up there again on the 31st with friends and made some decent powder turns on NW aspects near treeline. Imho, the area still needs a couple more feet of snow to get good. We did get a substantial settlement, whole slope and meadow (80'x80' NW aspect 30-35 slope angle), that left fractures across the whole slope. Try as we did, we couldn't get it to release, but we didn't ski it either.

Wow, thats a biggie! Id love to hit that chute dropping into Clayton sometime if it fills in.

Went out with Mountain Dog to scope conditions in the Gores and try and grab a 12er too. The South Ridge on Outpost is a good winter route. We went up from Pitkin Creek and dropped down Booth Creek to try and minimize traversing and scope out a new drainage. It worked out pretty well.


Holy Cross


Bald


Solitude


Slab!




The SW Bowl we descended






E Partner!

HFT, E Partner looks sick... I need to spend some time up there. Every time I see something from the Elks, it looks sweet.

I went out and got a 12er as well, a simple tour up Anvil (12,296') on the 550 corridor. Conditions at the top were 8 inches of windblow facets and crap. Down lower was a little better. Rode the N face, and then a W facing slope because it "seemed" deep enough and looked good, but it wasn't a great decision. Still low tide here for sure, we need about 2-3 more feet for good coverage. The thing that confused me was the amount of people out here! I saw 12 cars in the Chattanooga trail head, which is silly. Also the guys we caught on Anvil were the biggest gapers ever, headplanting down all of Anvil (seriously they couldn't link 4 turns). I don't know whats going on down here with that many people out and about, but I'm hoping its because there's limited choices and people are reading more Cold Smoke and have no idea where else to go.

But I did get a look at a couple more faces I hadn't seen yet for later in the year, and got a chance on Sunday to run snowmobile laps. The pictures of those lines didn't make it onto the interweb though, so they'll remain on my computer.

Battleship in front of V5, Grant and S Lookout

+1 on the increased gapers in the BC. A dude drove up to ours in a Porsche? As little as 5 years ago we would maybe see 1 other car in the parking area, now it's a full scene. Splitboards and AT gear is ruining the Backcountry.

Yeah, I totally saw some gaper hiking out of the BC with his stoic pants falling apart. Dude had a strap around his leg holding them together.


Get over it dude. It's not your backcountry, it's national forest, and if I hire a limo to drive me up to the TH, that's my prerogative. If your spot is blowing up, find a new one, or make some new friends.

shred, don't mistake my comment. I was just surprised with the people in the San Juans. But I normally am early season, we just all congregate on the same stuff. Good for them to get out, and I'm really not concerned when we get snow and can ride more. I don't run into people generally where I go, and I now have sleds that will let me go faster farther if that is the case.