October Skies...Dumping all Over the Front Range

For me at least, skiing in October is usually non-existant or restricted to a narrow white ribbon packed with people and serviced by a groaning full-capacity lift. That's how last saturday started out. An early fall storm cycle began plastering the front range with snow last week, and totals at Loveland and A-Basin approached 20". After a couple of cloudy days in Boulder, I decided to ditch out on the shop with my partner-in-shredding TJ and our good friends Andrew and John to satisfy my fix for a little sliding.

A-Basin was packed as usual, full mazes and a gaper slalom situation on the slopes. Things were decididly unsafe, as Andrew sped into some variable terrain and tweaked his knee. We headed back to TJ's mountainmobile to reassess the safety situation and found a huge cluster in the parking lot. A friendly family from Nevada had driven their minivan into the treacherous icy depths of the Basin's early riser lot, and through a combination of poor tires, surprisingly icy conditions and lack of driving skills had gotten themselves stuck. Utterly bewildered as why their sweet ride couldn't handle the conditons, the family kept spinning tire up the slope looking more and more dejected after every failed attempt.

Enter Teej to the rescue with his larger-than-life gnurly tires. A quick chain up and a little pushing dragged the hapless minivan out of the lot and off to tackle the pass. Oh, and they gave us $100 for the trouble. Thats karma for you. After gaining another unsolicited $20 from the owner of a similarly stuck Camry, we took another stupidly clogged run and decided that it was time for the angels of A-Basin's lot to check out the BC scene.

We loaded up and convinced the laid-up Andrew to pull shuttle duty for us and cruised up to the top of the pass for what was sure to a rock strewn scouting mission. We rolled up to find some more of the DU crew, including our buddy Bryant (soon to be father of some 190 Praxis pow missiles, congrats) whose condo in Breck saved our lives many times last season (yo, tell me what scotch you like and its yours).

It was a dumping gray-jay day and we set off into the bowl to see what we could find. And we found face shots! Incredible. The storms had dumped 18-20 over the past week and some light winds had packed some gullys with waist-deep blower. One turn would be base-painful and the next would be oh-so-floaty and an arc of the white stuff would curl up and over your head. There was enough coverage that most lines were skiable, but not so much that everything was covered. Some sweet tree jibs were available as were nice stylee hops over downed boulders and steep rock shots. We lapped the bowl 4 times, each time getting knee to waist deep shots between gouge inducing rubble. No core shots though, but that wouldn't matter anyways since the shop just picked up some sweet tuning gear, ah the perks of being a shop boy.

All in all, minus the knee tweakage (get better soon Andrew) and plus the face shots and $120 for being prepared for the winter weather, it was the raddest day I've had in October, and counts up there with some good mid-season days. Just goes to show you that life is like a box of chocolates, you gotta poke everything until you find the one with caramel in it.

Yours in P-Tex,

Geoff
alpine-sports.com