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nay

dirt heel pusher
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Colorado
Except for those pesky webcams ogsmile

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Closing day 2016.

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I'm really only perseverating about this because skiing every possible day I could the last three seasons, picking up some unexpected and losing some sure things, I hit 48 lift served each of those three seasons.

This season was same story of go every time I could, family and solo, and I hit 47. But my first intended real day (not counting the A-Basin WROD Oct streak day) I stopped for coffee in Downieville and in doing so just barely got caught in an I-70 closure at Georgetown that I waited for over two hours to clear, but there was a fatality and I finally had to turn back and spent like 5 more hours getting home. This was the insane ice day.

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So I left to ski 48 times, but only got 47.

This leaves me wondering if now I'm gonna die.
 
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Monique

bounceswoosh
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Joined
Nov 12, 2015
Posts
10,561
Location
Colorado

I've had the front and back doors open to let fresh air in. Nice.

My knee is pissy, or I'd be out mountain biking. Maybe a good thing - lots of studying happened. (Geek details: Implemented merge sort repeatedly until I mostly got it right ... and then I started getting it wrong and more wrong until I realized I had spent half an hour looking for what turned out to be typing "1" instead of "i" ... decided I was fried.)
 

nay

dirt heel pusher
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Colorado
Cirque Series @ A-Basin.

My son was second to summit and came in 5th overall.

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I had to bust to get up there before the runners using BMX to mid-mountain and some creative shortcuts while they ran out Zuma Cornice and back.

Some serious raffle opportunities for the runners.

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Yes, that's bacon with that Yeti.
 

nay

dirt heel pusher
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6,476
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Colorado
I'd run up a mountain for that bacon!

There was a pair of Icelantic Nomads, too, and the guy who won them seemed irritated.

Apparently running up mountains doesn't necessarily correlate with skiing down them.
 

ski otter 2

Making fresh tracks
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Joined
Nov 20, 2015
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2,920
Location
Front Range, Colorado
Well, sometimes hiking up does correlate with skiing down, as in your case, Nay! :)


Speaking of which, last Friday I hiked up one side of Beavers @ A Basin, and down the other. Being a smart phone owner instead of a wooden shoe dinosaur would have helped here (for photos), but a few comments will have to do.

The area being developed looked so pristine, untouched, amazing flowers, moss and lichens in the forest. Very different than it will look a few years from now, I'm afraid.

I'd say I got a close up look at about 2/3rds of the terrain. Nice stuff. So much fairly steep glade skiing.
I just hope it doesn't all get bumped out. If it stays fairly unbumped, it will indeed be a game changer.


There were several work crews up in there chainsawing away as I hiked. 4-5 guys, at least. The highest one up, just below tree line, noticed me and came over to talk. He said I was the first hiker he'd seen over there, ever.

He confirmed that they are working to open glades a bit on three runs so far, one below the Pali Ridge (almost finished), the other two more in the center of the new terrain, side by side (mostly still to go this summer, as far as I could tell).

I walked good stretches of those three runs. They are marked with checkered tape - red for hiker's right edge of the run and yellow for hiker's left edge of the run. So it's easy to see where they are going to be in the trees/glades. Very exciting.

I was pleasantly surprised at just how much work they had been doing, in glade terrain mostly, clearing away "limbs and leaners," cutting up big "fallen bridge" type trunks. They were using the smaller cut green boughs to carpet possible erosion areas. And a bit bigger branches they were stuffing against tree trunk clusters, for padding there and possibly to prevent dangerous snow funnels come ski season, it seemed.

In addition, they have begun cutting away preliminary openings for where the new lift will go. Hiking through there, I saw it runs diagonally across the central forested rib and its two runs being glade cleared, about 2/3rds of the way down.

The crew member I talked to said the men I'd seen on the trails were regular A Basin employees, but they had also hired an outside company for a separate pro crew of clearcutters, especially for the work at the bottom between the old and new areas, as I might have noticed.

Not so great, he said, but they had to have a way to get the snowcats back and forth, to work the new area regularly during the season. His crew was using that clearcut swath to get back to the main area each evening, after riding up the Pali lift in the mornings to get to work.

At the bottom I walked alongside that clearcut area. They've laid the fallen log sections for a maybe 15-20 yard wide "carpet" of cut trees in a maybe 25 yard wide lane up through the forest that I walked beside for a while, on the side trail the crew members had obviously made to get back and forth.

Maybe they are leaving that "carpet road" of cut trees in place for some reason, perhaps as a base layer below the snow for the snowcats to go on, not at all sure.

The Beavers ski lift won't go in until next summer, but clearly the area will be different for those who venture over there this season for a preview.
 

StuckonI70

Getting on the lift
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Joined
Aug 1, 2017
Posts
114
I wonder how much Steep Gullies will actually be open - keeping expectations low.
The trees below the Alleys opening up will make that area ski so much better.
 

ski otter 2

Making fresh tracks
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Joined
Nov 20, 2015
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2,920
Location
Front Range, Colorado
I wonder how much Steep Gullies will actually be open - keeping expectations low.
The trees below the Alleys opening up will make that area ski so much better.

Opening up the trees in/below the funnels of the Alleys seemed to be a small part of what they were doing, but much of that below may be a next phase for the work crews, this summer or next, not sure.

Opening up the trees below the two to four Alleys that the upper slopes funnel into was my first guess also for where the crews might be mostly working, before I got up there.

Nope. Instead, for work on their first run, for instance, they were opening up the glades on just the relatively steeper slope face below tree line, below the Pali Ridge, down to the small stream bed in the first Alley below, and not yet up the opposite side of the funnel.

The other two runs I followed seem to drop off blue run B2 on the map I've posted, right before and after the area the lift passes through as it crosses B2, in the map again. This too seems to correspond to the steep sides of alleys, or even to the rib between them, rather than the funnel parts below.

http://arapahoebasin.com/ABasin/image-library/inline-landscape/mdpmap4_orig.jpg

(I chose this map because you can enlarge it and move it around using the arrows for horizontal and vertical movement. Also, neither it nor the more polished later display map seem to be entirely accurate, comparing them to the terrain I actually went down, especially around the lift area and farther west.)

I purposely avoided looking at maps before going, to get a more direct experience, instead of a map-navigator type experience. I skirted to the right (hiker's right) below and around the Steep Gullies. In the summer this terrain is mostly steep talus slopes and rock cliffs, seemed like.

Looking at the Beavers' two maps now, I can see that the actual ski area boundary to the west is beyond the far ridge drop-off, with extra tree runs over there past the far ridge I'd guessed was the boundary while hiking: more tree glade terrain over there than I'd imagined, or have ever skied to.
 

nay

dirt heel pusher
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Joined
Dec 1, 2015
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6,476
Location
Colorado
@ "altitude camp" for xc running with my older sons.

Camp (well, my spot)

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The morning drive down.

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The temps.

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The August turns patch lookers left of Peak 10. Hopefully. Shoulda brought the skis and boots.

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nay

dirt heel pusher
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Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Posts
6,476
Location
Colorado
4th of July Bowl?

Yep. I keep thinking we're going to ski this patch just to the east of the bowl...

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...and the monsoon keeps thinking otherwise. We took the new to us 4Runner up along with the Cruiser so my older sons could get in some off-road experience.

I guess growing up as a passenger helps with pucker factor since this was their first time ever...

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Weather of course shifted again once we were off the top...

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Ken_R

Living the Dream
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Joined
Feb 10, 2016
Posts
5,775
Location
Denver, CO
It sure has been quite cool down in town. 60º and rain during most of the day. Had it been winter we would be talking about 2 feet of snow here easy.
 
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