Eldora, CO 2-10-08

EMSC

Well-known member
A really good ski day at Eldora, but a bit of a long story...

Eldora's entire upper mtn was closed due to wind all day thurs, all day fri and while they tried to make a go of it on Saturday, they closed the upper mtn by 10am. So basically 3 days in a row. My count has them up to 12 days or partial days of having to shut the upper mtn this year. A LOT more than the 4-6 that I used to consider typical (last year was a similar # of wind days too)...

Anyway, in that 3 day stretch Eldora got 18" of new snow which no one was really able to get to ski... So it was very crowded for a Sunday. There was an actual lift line on the backside (maybe 5-8min), I actually had to wait 4 chairs to get on Indian Peaks lift (normally deserted and can ski right on), and nearly full pen on the front side for the middle part of the day (maybe 10-15 minutes). The additional crowd seemed to be heavily on the snowboard side, with a lot more boarders around than typical for Eldora.

Official Snotel site is up to 101% of normal for Eldora finally, so very few places left to hit anything even on the steep stuff. You can mostly just go... Snow today was soft & great basically everywhere - but untracked places. In the woods or other untracked areas the snow was either wind affected or even deep in the trees somehow consolidated so that it was kind of chunky, not light & dry fluff. Tough to get your turns to be predictable which is not a good thing in the tighter trees.

Still a really good ski day on the hill, though the wind was picking up yet again by mid afternoon. And even though Eldora is known for being kind of breezy, it's been a bit crazy with the wind this year and last.
 

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I almost went up Friday but figured it would be too windy given what the trees were doing at my house in Boulder. A friend actually skipped work to go up there only to find the upper mountain closed. Bummer... Looking forward to getting up their this week. Thanks for the report.
 
Hey, EMSC, I'm planning to coach the Eldora YSL in a couple of weeks so I hope to see you there! I've never been to Eldora so I'm looking forward to seeing your home mountain.
 
TeamSummit, I'll definitely be around, but sort of busy. I get to be Chief of Race for this one. Means I'll be 'dropping off' first tracks here for a bit starting soon. 230+ kids with coaches & parents in tow is always fun :lol:

At least where we hold the YSL level race is not wind effected. So all I have to worry about is a big snow or a big warm up to make things difficult for us. Hopefully neither.

Look forward to meeting you.
 
Well, since I'm the only Team Summit coach who wears a helmet (black with white goggles) wave hi if you get a moment. I'll likely have the Y6 & Y7 groups. I seem to be our only coach with enough patience to deal with the youngin's. Good luck!
 
and Bump.

Figured I wouldn't start a new thread as no pics or really even a 'normal' ski TR. I have no idea how the mtn skied this past weekend really. Just an update to the thread that really started on this TR...

Spending time on organizing and final details, mtg with gatekeepers & RA's and, and, and... on Sat (did get a couple runs, but not much) and then setting/running the race starting @ 6:30am on-hill Sunday; which ended up at 250 kids (we ran out of our regular boys racing bibs even). A lot of racers; but our YSL's run as Duals on the poma lift so we still finished the actual racing part by ~2pm and awards done by 4 (that would be 200 awards!! - top 10 for a huge pile of gender/age groups and each run is it's own race at this d-team level). After more paperwork and cleanup to close it up, I made it home about 6:30pm. Long day.

I did get to meet TeamSummit for all of 20 seconds at the top of the hill though the promised helmet was absent :). I don't even recall exactly what was happening at that particular moment, but I quickly got distracted by something or someone else race related right about then.

I can tell you that it was light snow squalls nearly all day and rather warm as well. All in all, a good race day.
 
Actually, I think I ran away from you EMSC when I realized I needed to get a kid ready for their start. Great race with the efficiency and early finish appreciated by all. And having the Poma dedicated to the race really helped (except that I had J7 racers that had never ridden one before!)

And I was in my helmet for the morning but it was so warm that I had to get rid of it or I was going to melt! It was great to meet you, hopefully one day we'll get to get some turns together sans kiddos.
 
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