Crested Butte, CO, Mar. 22, 2024

[Tony Crocker]

Friday’s weather and conditions looked identical to Thursday, at least to start. By the end of the day it seemed slightly sloppier in direct sun areas. The North Face retained nearly all of its winter snow.

We were surprised to see people skiing fast and spraying snow on the single black groomer International under the Silver Queen lift. A local lady on our chair explained that International was intensely groomed including breaking up hard snow into fine packed powder. So we started with that.

That is a great fall line and snow was as advertised so we took an encore. Another local chair rider later in the day had worked as a groomer for 33 years. She said that hard snow can be broken up like that only on the graveyard shift after 1AM.

We skied 2 groomers on Paradise and 3 on East River before venturing onto the North Face at 12:30. I led Liz to Hawksnest.

On Thursday I had seen the Easy Out exit, just below these skiers.

But Friday we overshot it.

We would have to step back up to about the middle of that pic, but another skier said we could bail out via Buck’s traverse. That traverse was also a route finding adventure, but fortunately the snow was mostly softened not icy and we emerged in the right place.

Liz skied a couple of bump runs, then went down to the base to check out the shops. I skied two more North Face variations, one to Old Pro and the other Hard Slab to The Glades.

After a cruise to the base, I rode Silver Queen for a final run out the Banana/Funnel traverse. This time I skied Peel, which Liz had started down on Thursday. View down on Thursday:

I skied down skier’s left Friday. On Thursday I watched Liz get into skier’s right before traversing further out to Funnel.

The trademark of Crested Butte expert terrain is that often have no idea what you are getting into from above. Below the section visible in the two pics above, looking back up:

Below was sketchier yet.

This is why Liz bailed into the woods skier’s right Thursday and eventually got out with some ski patrol guidance. On Friday I sideslipped between some rocks in that pic and stepped over a couple more to get into a clean line skier’s left.

Looking back up at that section of rocks:

The moguls were tight for a while but at least no more rocks. I saw a couple of skiers climb over logs from skier’s right to get back in Lower Peel from those same woods where Liz had gone Thursday.

View up near bottom of Peel:

I skied 19,600 vertical Friday, another exciting and challenging day with ideal conditions for that terrain.

 

[Sbooker]

intensely groomed including breaking up hard snow into fine packed powder

I’m learning something here. I thought a run was groomed or not groomed. I did not know there were varying degrees of grooming. They run the Pistonbully over the snow but there is some kind of settling adjustment to groom in different ways?

 

[jasoncapecod]

I’m learning something here. I thought a run was groomed or not groomed. I did not know there were varying degrees of grooming. They run the Pistonbully over the snow but there is some kind of settling adjustment to groom in different ways?

The operator controls how much pressure is applied to the tiller.. thus how deep it penetrates into the surface..

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The operator controls how much pressure is applied to the tiller.. thus how deep it penetrates into the surface..

How deeply can it penetrate the surface? I always wondered why there wasn't a combination pulveriser/tiller that could blast up to, say, six inches into the hardpack/boilerplate to make it fully edgeable. I would've liked that on our brutal valley runs in Val d'Isere two months ago. Oh well, a girl can dream.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I am curious after that experience on International to know how often, where and in what circumstances grooming can be that effective. There is no question that with west exposure and a week of melt/freeze, that run would have been bulletproof in the absence of that grooming. The new data point for me was the claim by the veteran groomer that in order to break up the frozen granular you have to do that part of the grooming after 1AM. I'm sure some mountains don't want to pay for a second graveyard shift of grooming.

Crested Butte has some advantages: by this time of year most of that snow was natural, not manmade. Then you have the high altitude and dry air of Colorado. Has anyone seen this level of reconditioning frozen granular to true packed powder in the Northeast, especially on a pitch as steep as that part of International?

our brutal valley runs in Val d'Isere two months ago

The primary culprit in that situation was being at the end of the day on runs with very high skier density.

 

[EMSC]

I am curious after that experience on International to know how often, where and in what circumstances grooming can be that effective. There is no question that with west exposure and a week of melt/freeze, that run would have been bulletproof in the absence of that grooming. The new data point for me was the claim by the veteran groomer that in order to break up the frozen granular you have to do that part of the grooming after 1AM. I'm sure some mountains don't want to pay for a second graveyard shift of grooming.

It cannot be done infinitely. Only in the earlier parts of the melt freeze cycle. And in my experience, only in fairly dry climates where the underlying snow several inches down might (depends on just how warm things get) stays wintery/dry.

A lot of times snow cats mid-season aren't really even using the tiller much at all - at least in Colorado. Just using the blade up front to knock down uneven/mogul snow and the heavy plastic mats to smooth things out. Part of reason for the infamous Colorado 'Hardpack' on groomers that is very scratchy at times.

In the East when they use the tiller deeply after a hard re-freeze you get the unpleasant ice balls/death cookies scenario until it can be groomed a few more times to 'loose granular'.

 

[Sbooker]

A lot of times snow cats mid-season aren't really even using the tiller much at all - at least in Colorado. Just using the blade up front to knock down uneven/mogul snow and the heavy plastic mats to smooth things out.

I thought that was the extent of grooming. I didn’t know about the tiller.