This seems like the year to finish our season in Colorado instead of California. We’re on a 2+ week trip and will visit friends/family in Kansas and see a few other places while skiing at the beginning and end of the trip. Coming here at this time gives us 3 areas instead of just one after early May.
This is Winter Park’s closing weekend and I have limited experience there, the last time in 1997. We had a tough travel day Thursday so slept a bit late and did not get on the hill until 11AM. We probably didn’t miss a lot as it was very quiet, cloudy nearly all day so snow never got sloppy, even near the base areas. Supposedly there have been flurries every day since is snowed 18 inches a week ago. I thus expected winter conditions up high but that was not so. It has been very warm much of the time so the only packed powder was the top 200-300 feet of Parsenn Bowl and some of that had wind irregularities.
It snowed for about 10 minutes while we were up there around noon. The second run we followed the chair line down and the moguls were still firm until the bottom quarter or so.
We exited via Sunnyside lift and skied Village Way and Lonesome Whistle, the boundary of what was open since Eagle Wind and Pioneer lifts were closed. These runs were empty so the groomed snow below 11,000 feet had softened and skied beautifully. This area around the Olympia lift has just a few decent pitches. Most of it is quite flat and might have been a slog if the sun had been out. From Olympia we skied the better fall line of Cranmer and had lunch at Moffat Market at the Winter Park base.
After lunch we skied near the Zephyr lift. Hughes:
Sit-skier (Winter Park has the national center for adaptive skiing) on Little Pierre:
These had seen a bit more traffic than the previous groomers but not enough to chew up the snow and make it grabby in any way. We tested bumps on Outrigger about 2PM and snow there was still firm.
Nonetheless the well formed moguls for which Winter Park is famous allowed for reasonably fluid skiing.
We skied 2 more runs on Olympia before moving back to Mary Jane after 3PM. The groomed Mary Jane Trail was in excellent shape.
As my back is recovering from a strain last Sunday I wanted to be cautious about the Mary Jane bump runs. The first one we skied was Derailer, which was had excellent spring snow top to bottom with very well formed moguls on the steeper lower section.
Next we skied Freeriders down the Challenger liftline. This is a bit shaded and bumps were still firm. Our last run was on most of Derailer, where I wanted to drop off the sunnier east side, but most of those runs were closed, probably from partially melting out during the warm March. The bottom part we skied Boiler, which had deep moguls in very soft spring snow.
I did not remember Winter Park well at all from my prior 2 days. High speed lifts have replaced what were probably some quite long rides before. We will be back Sunday for closing day festivities. It will be a lot busier but we should know our way around better.
This is Winter Park’s closing weekend and I have limited experience there, the last time in 1997. We had a tough travel day Thursday so slept a bit late and did not get on the hill until 11AM. We probably didn’t miss a lot as it was very quiet, cloudy nearly all day so snow never got sloppy, even near the base areas. Supposedly there have been flurries every day since is snowed 18 inches a week ago. I thus expected winter conditions up high but that was not so. It has been very warm much of the time so the only packed powder was the top 200-300 feet of Parsenn Bowl and some of that had wind irregularities.
It snowed for about 10 minutes while we were up there around noon. The second run we followed the chair line down and the moguls were still firm until the bottom quarter or so.
We exited via Sunnyside lift and skied Village Way and Lonesome Whistle, the boundary of what was open since Eagle Wind and Pioneer lifts were closed. These runs were empty so the groomed snow below 11,000 feet had softened and skied beautifully. This area around the Olympia lift has just a few decent pitches. Most of it is quite flat and might have been a slog if the sun had been out. From Olympia we skied the better fall line of Cranmer and had lunch at Moffat Market at the Winter Park base.
After lunch we skied near the Zephyr lift. Hughes:
Sit-skier (Winter Park has the national center for adaptive skiing) on Little Pierre:
These had seen a bit more traffic than the previous groomers but not enough to chew up the snow and make it grabby in any way. We tested bumps on Outrigger about 2PM and snow there was still firm.
Nonetheless the well formed moguls for which Winter Park is famous allowed for reasonably fluid skiing.
We skied 2 more runs on Olympia before moving back to Mary Jane after 3PM. The groomed Mary Jane Trail was in excellent shape.
As my back is recovering from a strain last Sunday I wanted to be cautious about the Mary Jane bump runs. The first one we skied was Derailer, which was had excellent spring snow top to bottom with very well formed moguls on the steeper lower section.
Next we skied Freeriders down the Challenger liftline. This is a bit shaded and bumps were still firm. Our last run was on most of Derailer, where I wanted to drop off the sunnier east side, but most of those runs were closed, probably from partially melting out during the warm March. The bottom part we skied Boiler, which had deep moguls in very soft spring snow.
I did not remember Winter Park well at all from my prior 2 days. High speed lifts have replaced what were probably some quite long rides before. We will be back Sunday for closing day festivities. It will be a lot busier but we should know our way around better.