Vail, CO Feb 25 & 26, 2023

EMSC

Well-known member
Stereotypical Vail

What does that mean? Well for late Feb it means crazy crowded Saturday, generally nice snowpack and surface conditions, the occasional operational ?? and plenty of $$ burned.

Jr had a pair of races at Golden Peak area (base at lookers left of trail map). So start the day with a equipment drop at that base then I drove back over to the parking garage to actually park. There are hotels over there that will allow you to park but for even more $$ than the garage - one person was paying $80/day for example. Parking garage is now $40/day on 'peak days' and only a ~10 minute walk back to Golden peak base so that was an easy choice for me.

Operational ?? #1 related to tickets. It was a 2 day race. While racers & parents do get a discount (with still almost certainly the most expensive parent tickets in the country would be my guess) they gave us 6 RFID cards for the three of us. Not 3 cards with 2 days loaded on each card, nope here is your 6 cards and make sure your day #2 RFID cards don't get read by a scanner on day #1 cause we will not replace them for you. Really?

Saturday was sunny and very warm, eventually hitting ~40F at the base of Vail. Surprisingly only the flattest of surfaces at lifts and the due S faces of the back bowls got skunked. Much of the back bowls arcs around to E or W facing and those areas had mixtures of still decent to half soft/half chunky by the end of the day. In part saved by high clouds that moved in after noon which weakened the sun just enough. Initial Saturday snow was great with ~9" of new in the couple days prior which was still very soft. Given the ticket prices I was sure going to make a few laps up top and in the back bowls between my sons race runs. Saturday also had the largest crowds I've been part of in quite a while. 25+ minute waits on #6 lift out of Golden peak all morning (thank goodness for a racer line for kids/coaches). I heard from a snowboard instructor that I rode with on Sunday that #37 lift for Blue Sky Basin had had 40+ minute lift lines on Sat!! Crazy.

Sunday AM the snow was decent, but clearly much firmer than Saturday even on N facing areas. Starting out mostly sunny with eventually squalls coming through by ~noon through the afternoon dropping ~2" of snow which greatly softened at least N facing surfaces once again. Operational ?? #2 was me trying to get my wife to Blue Sky Basin which she had never skied. So first thing in the AM we went all the way back expecting it to open by ~9:30a and getting there 5 min early. After waiting for 15+ minutes, not a single sign of opening. No skunked snow on that part of the hill, no new snow, no terrain being freshly opened or closed, etc... Lifties watching the lift spin, waiting for Patrol to allow them to open. Literally nothing complex or special about the day on a very busy weekend and they couldn't even get it opened on schedule with 50+ people waiting at that lift by the time we left. Very weird and not a great look IMHO. Will my wife ever get to see any of BSB? Who knows, but quite possibly not. We only had the timing to get a single run in on it just as it was supposed to open before rushing back front side for the race anyway.

On the good side operationally, they do a great job of grooming and have a run or two off every lift that is pretty immaculate to getting average skiers around the hill. I'm not sure I want to know how many cats they run and how many locations around the hill they have to store them and fuel and maintain them. I just know it's a LOT. It's also kinda weird feeling that basically every single lift is a detachable (not literally, literally; but excepting surface lifts and rank beginner lifts...).

We did get lucky enough weather wise for the weekend as we stayed in Silverthorne and ran up and over Vail Pass multiple times which can be a bit of a crap shoot if it snows at all. The drive home was a bit painful as expected with 'metering' at the Eisenhower tunnels, though by the time we reached that I figure the backups had already eased by several miles.

Sun Up bowl early Sat with small part of Blue Sky Basin in the background
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Does everyone recognize the well known 14'er in this pic? (top of Sun Up Bowl lift early Sat).
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In the right hand side of this pic you can see a line of cars parked on the frontage road next to I70. With people probably walking a mile to the ski area from out of sight to lookers right from there...
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Looking W in Sun Down bowl from near the high noon lift. You can see the new Sun Down Bowl lift that just opened a couple weeks ago in the distance. This was ~11:30 and the snow was just on the edge of warming up. So still nice & soft, but air temp was clearly almost ready to turn the snow.
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Random action
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Top of Vail food prices - actually not as bad as Keystone, but look at the price of drinks! Esp a gatorade or beer!
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Oh wait, we are here for a race...
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Some high cloud helped temps late Sat. Glad my son likes to free ski a bit after the race unlike so many of the racers. I think this was Gengis Khan run with BSB in background.
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Crowds even at the very end of the day...
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Looking at China Bowl and orient Express lift.
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Not all skunked, but definitely firmer everywhere Sun am
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Meh, we'll get around to opening up when we feel like it...
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That would be girls course lookers right and boys course lookers left. Both starting on the ridge upper left. For the boys course, the red delay gate (near top of final pitch) then very sharp turn at the blue had multiple kids either crash, make crazy recoveries or etc...
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Upper course for PM run. Lots of leftover blue dye from 1st run just to make things a bit confusing!
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Then the snow came. I think this was Avanti on front side (as my son raced nearly last for 2nd run).
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Visibility was poor for the first 20+ boys, but then got back to a mix of sun & clouds.
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Again some more free runs after the race.
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Decent conditions for the most part, it appears.

make sure your day #2 RFID cards don't get read by a scanner on day #1 cause we will not replace them for you.
To be fair to VR -- when Tony and I got our two days of passes at Serre Chevalier, they basically said the same thing and advised us to make sure that both cards wouldn't be read on Day 1.
 
Yes I took my two cards at Serre Chevalier and gave one to Liz to avoid the double read on same day scenario.

Vail has had this fearsome reputation for crowds since before my first visit in 1986. I have been successful in avoiding them, with most of my visits being midweek in January, which I think is Vail's optimal time for the Back Bowls anyway.
 
I still think it's poor operation/laziness on both operators part. I know they sell multi-day tickets on-line for example. It has to be ridiculously easy to code the system to do more than one day on a rfid card.
 
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