Paul drives over from Eagle to ski Aspen Highlands about once a week. So we drove Wednesday, spent the night in Aspen and skied our last day Thursday at Snowmass before heading home.
Paul knows Highlands in minute detail. One of Highlands’ interesting features is wooden trail signs not on the trail map and usually affixed to trees. Here’s his web page with pics of 104 of them.
He first showed us Stage Left.
Deeper into the trees:
There were 5 inches new snow and 15 in the past 3 days. Liz enjoying some of that:
On our next lap Paul took us to Chix Coup.
Chix Coup has an old chair hung from a tree.
There is also a shrine similar to those I’ve seen on Ajax for deceased celebrities.
Paul does not know who Brad was, nor has met anyone else who knows.
About 1PM Liz and took a leisurely lunch at Merry Go Round while Paul hiked and skied Highland Bowl, which I’m sure was sublime with the 15 inches. I did that with him in 2015 but no way this time, especially after the prior two energetic powder days.
We met at the top of Loge about 2:45, view of Highland Bowl from there:
Weather was similar to the prior day at Vail, mostly overcast with highs less than 20F at upper elevations.
Paul led us into another local’s shot into the Temerity terrain. We dropped into Snyder’s, another sign not on the trail map though it’s close by the Broadway trail. The real stash was this diagonal line dropping northeast from Snyder’s into the lower half of Sodbuster.
Views up and down during my suck wind break half way down the diagonal line.
That line was all deep powder turns. Sodbuster was a mix of powder and soft moguls. Deep Temerity is a strong candidate for most demanding terrain pod in North America. Thus I needed 7 suck wind breaks skiing its 1,600 vertical despite the near ideal conditions. Bottom of the lift:
About ¾ of the way up:
After that I skied the most mellow blue groomed trails I could find over Highlands’ 3,700 vertical to finish the day. This was a strictly quality over quantity day to make use of what energy we had left after Monday and Tuesday, 12,200 vertical, about 3K of powder.
Paul knows Highlands in minute detail. One of Highlands’ interesting features is wooden trail signs not on the trail map and usually affixed to trees. Here’s his web page with pics of 104 of them.
He first showed us Stage Left.
Deeper into the trees:
There were 5 inches new snow and 15 in the past 3 days. Liz enjoying some of that:
On our next lap Paul took us to Chix Coup.
Chix Coup has an old chair hung from a tree.
There is also a shrine similar to those I’ve seen on Ajax for deceased celebrities.
Paul does not know who Brad was, nor has met anyone else who knows.
About 1PM Liz and took a leisurely lunch at Merry Go Round while Paul hiked and skied Highland Bowl, which I’m sure was sublime with the 15 inches. I did that with him in 2015 but no way this time, especially after the prior two energetic powder days.
We met at the top of Loge about 2:45, view of Highland Bowl from there:
Weather was similar to the prior day at Vail, mostly overcast with highs less than 20F at upper elevations.
Paul led us into another local’s shot into the Temerity terrain. We dropped into Snyder’s, another sign not on the trail map though it’s close by the Broadway trail. The real stash was this diagonal line dropping northeast from Snyder’s into the lower half of Sodbuster.
Views up and down during my suck wind break half way down the diagonal line.
That line was all deep powder turns. Sodbuster was a mix of powder and soft moguls. Deep Temerity is a strong candidate for most demanding terrain pod in North America. Thus I needed 7 suck wind breaks skiing its 1,600 vertical despite the near ideal conditions. Bottom of the lift:
After that I skied the most mellow blue groomed trails I could find over Highlands’ 3,700 vertical to finish the day. This was a strictly quality over quantity day to make use of what energy we had left after Monday and Tuesday, 12,200 vertical, about 3K of powder.
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