EMSC
Well-known member
Odd ski day of partly powder and partly dust on crust.
The misses and I went up to ski without Jr tagging along. She didn't ski for 4 years in a row with the little guy around and this year she's only gone up when it's been all 3 of us. So she wanted to see how she'd do back up on the main mountain. Today held an odd little storm with 0" on the 6am report, but dumping heavily from right about then till ~9:30am when we arrived just as the sun was coming back out. Much of the mountain had been melted by the sun and super warm temps the last couple of days and I hoped the new snow would be deep enough to make the conditions OK. We got lucky, since for the most part conditions were decent.
We started on the front side's Jolly Jug which in the lee of the wind had ~4" on it depending on which part of it; and while you hit the icy, hard bottom a bit, it wasn't too jarring and skied decently (trail faces due East). Then heading to the backside to see if the north facing stuff was any better underneath. Yes and no. I tried out steep N facing Ambush which had a nice 6-8" blown in, but it still was rock hard underneath and only OK skiing at best. Around the Horn was much better as a low angle blue. Both Corona and Muleshoe skied quite well and it was really apparent that most of the backside not only had softer underneath surfaces, but had also gotten more like 5-6" of snow vs the frontside's mostly 3-4". After multiple laps she started to get tired and stopped in the lodge while I checked out Salto Glade. A definite 6-8" on the steep upper pitches which skied like a sweet powder day of untracked. There was practically no one there and I might have been the 3rd or 4th person in that whole section of Salto. Far and away the most deserted I've seen Eldora this year. Helps that it was a Tuesday, and with lots of folks dropping skiing from their minds as the warm temps have started in in the city... Anyway only the bottom hundred or so verts couldn't be avoided - super hard, jarring bumps; but fortunately only for a very short stretch.
With just another couple of runs we moved back to the front side just as more snow and flat light were moving back in. We tried our luck for one final run back on Jolly Jug but it was too heavily skied and was a scratchy, icy mess with big puffs of randomly placed snow piles. Ending our day with about 3 hrs of skiing. We finished with a very nice, quiet late lunch at by far the best place to go in Ned - Not so ironically named..... Salto (yes, named after the ski trail, the owners favorite up on the hill). Not a huge menu, but everything they make they seem to do consistently really well. It was pounding snow when we finished lunch and I suspect it was a fun hidden powder/storm day, on the backside anyway, for those literal 3 or 4 experts that showed up.
The misses and I went up to ski without Jr tagging along. She didn't ski for 4 years in a row with the little guy around and this year she's only gone up when it's been all 3 of us. So she wanted to see how she'd do back up on the main mountain. Today held an odd little storm with 0" on the 6am report, but dumping heavily from right about then till ~9:30am when we arrived just as the sun was coming back out. Much of the mountain had been melted by the sun and super warm temps the last couple of days and I hoped the new snow would be deep enough to make the conditions OK. We got lucky, since for the most part conditions were decent.
We started on the front side's Jolly Jug which in the lee of the wind had ~4" on it depending on which part of it; and while you hit the icy, hard bottom a bit, it wasn't too jarring and skied decently (trail faces due East). Then heading to the backside to see if the north facing stuff was any better underneath. Yes and no. I tried out steep N facing Ambush which had a nice 6-8" blown in, but it still was rock hard underneath and only OK skiing at best. Around the Horn was much better as a low angle blue. Both Corona and Muleshoe skied quite well and it was really apparent that most of the backside not only had softer underneath surfaces, but had also gotten more like 5-6" of snow vs the frontside's mostly 3-4". After multiple laps she started to get tired and stopped in the lodge while I checked out Salto Glade. A definite 6-8" on the steep upper pitches which skied like a sweet powder day of untracked. There was practically no one there and I might have been the 3rd or 4th person in that whole section of Salto. Far and away the most deserted I've seen Eldora this year. Helps that it was a Tuesday, and with lots of folks dropping skiing from their minds as the warm temps have started in in the city... Anyway only the bottom hundred or so verts couldn't be avoided - super hard, jarring bumps; but fortunately only for a very short stretch.
With just another couple of runs we moved back to the front side just as more snow and flat light were moving back in. We tried our luck for one final run back on Jolly Jug but it was too heavily skied and was a scratchy, icy mess with big puffs of randomly placed snow piles. Ending our day with about 3 hrs of skiing. We finished with a very nice, quiet late lunch at by far the best place to go in Ned - Not so ironically named..... Salto (yes, named after the ski trail, the owners favorite up on the hill). Not a huge menu, but everything they make they seem to do consistently really well. It was pounding snow when we finished lunch and I suspect it was a fun hidden powder/storm day, on the backside anyway, for those literal 3 or 4 experts that showed up.