jamesdeluxe
Administrator
As I continue my survey of independent Colorado ski areas this season, EMSC mentioned that his son's racing team was going to be at Ski Cooper on Sunday so I figured that it'd be nice to catch up with him and break up my habit of usually skiing solo over the last few years.
You're aware that Ski Cooper is one of the Colorado Gems group, not affiliated with Epic Pass or Ikon. While it's not one of the I-70 resorts, the only access from Denver is by taking I-70 past Copper Mountain, then driving a further half hour or so near historic mining town Leadville. I'm really starting to feel like a real Denver Front Range skier, having to join other weekend warriors on the way up I-70, including the occasional dreaded "red-snake" effect at certain points.
Exiting at Copper...
... I got there in a little over two hours:
Similar to Sunlight and Powderhorn from last weekend, its audience is almost exclusively local families and retirees. The terrain is mostly green and blue (the blacks are at most double-blue) along with a cat-skiing operation on Chicago Ridge, which overlooks the in-bounds area.
EMSC's ski team on the backside triple:
Little did I know that exactly a month ago Cooper had opened its first new terrain sector in many moons, along with a brand new t-bar (I didn't realize they were still being manufactured), the Tennessee Creek Basin off the backside where the first-aid cross is in the map above. As we headed up the frontside lift, EMSC mentioned that he was looking forward to checking it out and that a recent press release really played up that intermediates should not attempt it:
Given the comparatively mellow pitch of the rest of the mountain, EMSC figured that the warnings about difficulty were likely exaggerated; however, after they dropped the rope around 10 am and we headed in, he agreed that the single-black pitch combined with very tight trees combined to create a legit expert sector and that they should consider glading it a bit in future years.
While he's a very strong skier, I'm not quite there, so I wasn't able to link turns or do much beyond picking my way gingerly through the pines. Hitting the bumps alongside the t-bar was a more realistic option for me:
The rest of the terrain, which had received a foot of snow over the past week, was skiing beautifully: velvety groomers with soft chop along the sides and on ungroomed trails. The weather prediction was 36 and sunny the entire day; however, high clouds hung on until the early afternoon, so my pix from the morning aren't very clear (I seem to be saying that a lot recently). Still, we enjoyed high-speed runs through the cut-up leftovers, with Chicago Ridge in the first pic:
By the time the sun came out, I was getting tired of taking pix so I only have a few, but it was pretty ideal with ski-on lifts, albeit with a fair amount of stops and starts from all the young kids:
In short: an enjoyable day, conditions about as good as it gets without anything fresh or untracked, and great to ski with EMSC.
Good thing that I left in such a pleasant mood as the drive back on I-70 was absolutely hideous, far worse than anything I ever encountered while living in Brooklyn and having to enter Manhattan through the GWB after skiing in the Catskills. Based on traffic reports from radio stations in Frisco as I drove by, the I-70 parking lot is standard operating procedure on Sundays. It took me just short of four hours to make it to C-470 in Denver, no joke. Apparently, that's standard operating procedure as weekend crowds head back to the Front Range, so for the rest of the season, I'm likely not going to ski anything west of the Eisenhower Tunnel (i.e. sticking with Loveland or Winter Park if I can score a discounted ticket) on Sundays or I'll stay for drinks and dinner and not get on the highway until well past 7 pm.
What Epic Pass and Ikon hath wrought -- or was it always this way?
You're aware that Ski Cooper is one of the Colorado Gems group, not affiliated with Epic Pass or Ikon. While it's not one of the I-70 resorts, the only access from Denver is by taking I-70 past Copper Mountain, then driving a further half hour or so near historic mining town Leadville. I'm really starting to feel like a real Denver Front Range skier, having to join other weekend warriors on the way up I-70, including the occasional dreaded "red-snake" effect at certain points.
Exiting at Copper...
... I got there in a little over two hours:
Similar to Sunlight and Powderhorn from last weekend, its audience is almost exclusively local families and retirees. The terrain is mostly green and blue (the blacks are at most double-blue) along with a cat-skiing operation on Chicago Ridge, which overlooks the in-bounds area.
EMSC's ski team on the backside triple:
Little did I know that exactly a month ago Cooper had opened its first new terrain sector in many moons, along with a brand new t-bar (I didn't realize they were still being manufactured), the Tennessee Creek Basin off the backside where the first-aid cross is in the map above. As we headed up the frontside lift, EMSC mentioned that he was looking forward to checking it out and that a recent press release really played up that intermediates should not attempt it:
Given the comparatively mellow pitch of the rest of the mountain, EMSC figured that the warnings about difficulty were likely exaggerated; however, after they dropped the rope around 10 am and we headed in, he agreed that the single-black pitch combined with very tight trees combined to create a legit expert sector and that they should consider glading it a bit in future years.
While he's a very strong skier, I'm not quite there, so I wasn't able to link turns or do much beyond picking my way gingerly through the pines. Hitting the bumps alongside the t-bar was a more realistic option for me:
The rest of the terrain, which had received a foot of snow over the past week, was skiing beautifully: velvety groomers with soft chop along the sides and on ungroomed trails. The weather prediction was 36 and sunny the entire day; however, high clouds hung on until the early afternoon, so my pix from the morning aren't very clear (I seem to be saying that a lot recently). Still, we enjoyed high-speed runs through the cut-up leftovers, with Chicago Ridge in the first pic:
By the time the sun came out, I was getting tired of taking pix so I only have a few, but it was pretty ideal with ski-on lifts, albeit with a fair amount of stops and starts from all the young kids:
In short: an enjoyable day, conditions about as good as it gets without anything fresh or untracked, and great to ski with EMSC.
Good thing that I left in such a pleasant mood as the drive back on I-70 was absolutely hideous, far worse than anything I ever encountered while living in Brooklyn and having to enter Manhattan through the GWB after skiing in the Catskills. Based on traffic reports from radio stations in Frisco as I drove by, the I-70 parking lot is standard operating procedure on Sundays. It took me just short of four hours to make it to C-470 in Denver, no joke. Apparently, that's standard operating procedure as weekend crowds head back to the Front Range, so for the rest of the season, I'm likely not going to ski anything west of the Eisenhower Tunnel (i.e. sticking with Loveland or Winter Park if I can score a discounted ticket) on Sundays or I'll stay for drinks and dinner and not get on the highway until well past 7 pm.
What Epic Pass and Ikon hath wrought -- or was it always this way?