Eldora, CO 1-14-16

EMSC

Well-known member
Skiing like a local.

Just me this weekend, but by the time I got up Eldora was the only real choice (I70 was already backed up like a parking lot at 6:30am). I headed out 20 minute earlier than last week hoping that would be enough to be ahead of the new normal Saturday crunch. Not so much. Better than last weekend, but still nearly 30 minutes (vs 50min last week) of delay relative to good old days 'normal'. Hard to tell how much earlier to leave. At some point it will be ahead of the crazy crunch, but so early that I'm sitting around a long time waiting for the lift to open.

Anyway, I was on the lift ~15 minutes after opening and immediately headed for my stashes. I was hopeful that all the new snow over the course of the week would be waiting for me. The reality was a mixed bag. Clearly others had been exploring, but also clearly they didn't now where they were going. the very top and bottom parts of my stashes were hit heavily, but much of the line had only a couple tracks going through it. That means that most didn't find the couple of routes in their entirety and that most got lost in the dense trees. So I suspect most won't bother skiing that area again. The trees are just too dense unless you really know where you are going.

Based on the surprising stiffness of the snow in certain 'on trail' areas I decided to not bother with the trail map for he most part and hit my stashes which had ~6-8" of partially chopped powder for 11 consecutive runs. Riding as a single, the lift lines were never more than 5 minutes on Corona. Somewhere in that streak I took a 15 minute lunch at the Lookout before eventually deciding to save my legs a bit for Sunday. I hit 2 quick laps on IP chair, which never has a line, before pulling the plug somewhere after 2p. I counted something along the lines of 16.5K of vert in something under 5 hrs of actual ski time.

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