joegm
New member
i was planning to hit k for 3 this week... in hindsight, i'm glad that got cut down to 2. <BR>k on thurs and fri--essentially the same facts both days... the morning temps were around minus 25 both days... friday seemed a little more windy with gusts of up to around 30 i would guess, so u can imagine what it was like... during the day it proabably went up to around 5 or 10 below i would guess, depending on your elevation and wind exposure. the winds were basically off the top of the k1 g and off of the top 1/3 of most of the spinning lifts... it is essentially super dry pp all around... really not a lot of ice on what was technically open. 95 % of the hill is groomed flat. the no bull trail count varies as is was in relation to what they were spinning... they were calling it as high as 140 down to 110. we found 3 essentially non groomed sustained skiable lines, the best of which is vertigo off the skyship stage 2. ( chute off the snowden and the outer limits being the other 2 ) we pretty much hit that ( vertigo ) traffic free all day on thursday as they had a rope pulled across 95 % of the opening to deek people into thinking it was closed, but it was open , legit ( rock ski's only though unless you are sponsored!!!! ) ... the top drop in was sketch with rocks , but once you dropped in it was the best snow on the hill. caught up with glen plake that night at freds freeride and he was upset cause he did not get over to bear on thursday, which they apparently opened halfway through the day... they were blowing furiously on the outerlimits on both thursday and fri. we set up out of bear on friday, and while the snow was killer on the o.l. ( smooth as silk super dry fake of about 4 to 6 inches, the visibilty was really hard so we ended up back on vertigo off the skyship in the am... the skyship stage 2 went down about 12 pm for about 3 hours so that killed that. lunch and a venture over to the snowdon quad found "the chute" trail off the snowdon q to be bumped up with decent snow, but the ride on the chair was so cold we only hit that three times... back over to check out the stage 2 once last time and it was fired back up... hit the vertigo 2 more times and threw it becasue as that old proverb say " tis not a wise man who ski thin cover bumps with no feeling in feet "... otherwise , like i said it's pretty much nice edgable pp all around the hill, but obviously, just really, really cold with, now that bear is open, 5 base areas to work out of...we jumped the ropes for once run in the green glades off the rams head on thurs also... skiable no doubt but not with good skis. postcript/observations: in my mind , this was the coldest 2 day ski trip i have ever been on... even glen plake seemed a little freaked out... ( plake must have been saying, " why am i not in mammoth with tony c and the boys and the 118 in 2 weeks !!! )i've probably skied in colder temps and not known it at the time, but this was borderline insane... if my buddy and i did not find that one bump line off the stage 2, we probably would not have skied much at all, as we both found that just skiing down of flats making gs type turns was too cold and skiing the bumps was really the only way to stay somewhat focused... riding up to bear on thurs morning just to check it out, it struck me the lack of snow depth on the sides of the roads and in the woods... k still has front face trails off the k1 g exposed with grass.. k still does not have a half pipe up and running, which is amazing to me at this point. i say this not too complain, as it's not their fault, but it is upseting for the spring skiers, no doubt to see such a sparse base so far. once other thing i noticed was that k is getting cute by comboing their trail counts with pico, which had on their report about 30 and three lifts... not a big deal, but a little deceptive. back next tues from loon and maybe k on wed, depending upon how boring loon is.
) but we figured it was the only way to last most of the day... just skiing the short groomers to access the bump run on vertigo was brutal