Loveland, CO: 03/19/17

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
My wife and I hadn't gone on a destination trip this season so we scored some cheapskate Southwest tickets and flew to Colorado for 1.5 days in Denver (where it was 82 degrees) and three ski days. Arrived first thing Sunday morning at Loveland to a mostly full parking lot -- looking forward to a perfect spring day, which is exactly what we got.

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One of the great things about Loveland is that even with a lot of people in attendance, we had nothing but ski-on lifts the entire day and a deserted mountain. During the spring, Loveland's horseshoe shape allows you to follow the sun from bell to bell -- starting on the far looker's right off Lift 8 above the Eisenhower Tunnel and progressively moving left through late afternoon.

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Even with a blazing sun, the hard overnight freeze locked up the offpiste for most of the day and the groomed snow never quite corned up, but it was silky sugar and that was good enough for us:
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Right next to Lift 8 is the Ginny Lee Cabin. No food or beverages, but a pleasant deck to take a break:
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As a marketing geek, I'm a big fan of Loveland's classic old-school logo with the happy skier, which is virtually everywhere:
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The de rigueur shot of my wife making friends with an onsite pooch:
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The afternoon was fantastic:
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Some liftie did a nice job with the whiteboard:
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From the top of Spillway, looking across toward the terrain above the tunnel:
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Sorry I missed you James.

I had convinced the whole family to go skiing Sunday, but then the fire broke out in the foothills and closed Boulder Canyon. While not overly difficult to get around that closure, it would have added 20 minutes each way on a slush cup kind of day (at Eldora's altitude). So instead we got stuff done at home and I got a mtn bike ride in. First time I've ever been circumvented from a ski day by forest fires.
 
EMSC":2we3ha1k said:
a slush cup kind of day
It wasn't slushy at Loveland. As mentioned, the sun was really strong but didn't succeed in softening up anything other than the groomed until 2 pm.
 
jamesdeluxe":1xqne0gv said:
My wife and I hadn't gone on a destination trip this season
I'm guessing she might have preferred the previous destination trip a couple of weeks ago. :stir:
 
jamesdeluxe":1kgn0dm7 said:
It wasn't slushy at Loveland. As mentioned, the sun was really strong but didn't succeed in softening up anything other than the groomed until 2 pm.

Yes, but Eldora's top is a few hundred feet lower than the base of Loveland. So I would still expect slush cup at Eldora. Similar-ish to the last time Tony was out here dealing with not great WP conditions vs mostly good snow at Loveland due to altitude (and continuous Loveland wind).

Very much looking forward to the next TR from out here.
 
jamesdeluxe":3krjo8w8 said:
My wife and I hadn't gone on a destination trip this season
Tony Crocker":3krjo8w8 said:
I'm guessing she might have preferred the previous destination trip a couple of weeks ago. :stir:
Of course, she enjoys going abroad but I think that Colorado worked out better for her than Valais:
-- She has a harder time adjusting to the six-hour time change than me. If we were going to be there for a longer stay like you two recently did, this would be less of an issue.
-- Even though many/most people speak serviceable English there, she's still dependent on me translating a lot of stuff, which gets tiresome for her. I know it does for me when I go to places where I don't speak the language.
-- Eight straight days on 95% drag lifts would've definitely killed her. She actually enjoyed the one at Ski Cooper, which we lapped four times, but the platters in Valais were far longer and steeper. Kinda the way Alta's High-T is considered a single-black traverse (give or take depending on conditions), a fair number of the drag lifts in Switzerland were at least single-black uphills, and got more difficult as the day wore on and your legs got tired. I anticipated the platter toll with lots of adductor exercises at my local sports club in the weeks leading up to the trip, but it's still challenging for North Americans who rarely encounter drag lifts these days
 
jamesdeluxe":1yk761tm said:
Eight straight days on 95% drag lifts would've definitely killed her.
Wait until you try the nutcracker lifts in New Zealand! Actually, riding those lifts is not that much different from a T-bar or poma but getting attached in the first place can be a challenge.

New Zealand is the only place I've ever skied a full day with majority of transport on surface lifts, and even there only Mt. Hutt in 1982 and Porter's in 2010, aside from those 2 club fields.

jamesdeluxe":1yk761tm said:
a fair number of the drag lifts in Switzerland were at least single-black uphills
Summit platter at Lake Louise is the only one of those I ski with any regularity. 3x a day is not that big a deal, but if all the lifts were like that it would add up over time.

Klosters Madrisa is majority surface lifts. Richard hated that so we relocated after a couple of hours to the Parsenn. Parseen has some T-bars too and Richard managed to get it jammed as we exited one of them. Fortunately I was able to swat it loose overhead with a ski pole.
 
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