Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Powder Weekend!

This past weekend we headed to the mountains in Summit County for some skiing, both on the resort and off in the backcountry.

On Saturday, Melissa and I took a few runs at Arapahoe Basin. They had about 5" of new snow and it continued to snow all day. Melissa wanted to get some practice searching for avalanche beacons before we headed out in to the backcountry on Sunday, so we stopped mid-mountain at the Beacon Bowl. Ski patrol has set up an area with eight buried beacons. You can turn them on and off individually and search for them. When you find one, you use the probe to find exactly where it is buried and when you hit it, a buzzer goes off. Great practice. The more you do it, the easier it will be to save a life. Hopefully we never need it.

After a few more runs, we headed back to the Keystone condo, then out to Breckenridge to check out the International Snow Sculpture Championships. Some amazing works of snow! All created without the use of any power tools. Read an article about it HERE. See some of my photos HERE.

On Sunday, Erich, Melissa and I headed up to Loveland Pass for some backcountry. We hiked about 20min from the road and dropped in for some great turns in the 10+ inches of fresh powder. It was snowing quite a bit as we hiked, but cleared up just as we started to ski. Great timing! Erich and I took video of our trip, I'll be putting it together into a short movie. I'll keep you updated on the posting of that.

After our backcountry experience, Melissa and I headed back to A-Basin for some more skiing. We traveled out to the Montezuma Bowl. They just added this terrain last year and it expanded the ski area by 80%! Some great terrain out there that we have not had a chance to experience till now. We dropped in at the Zuma Cornice for some great snow. Can't wait to hit it up again!
Video of Jason's turns
Video of Melissa's turns

See photos from the weekend HERE.


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