Colorado Trip 2011 Blog 7

With such a positive experience under our belts from the day before, we kept telling ourselves to try and not have any expectations for day 2. This time things were a little more organized and we had half an idea of what we were doing. A new group of skiers and riders and a new guide named Roof, who was a snowboarder who came to Silverton six years ago and never left. There were some interesting elements to the second day’s group, the first being, the addition of an Australian journalist writing for what he called the aussi version of national geographic and the second being the addition of a second guide, Josh. The addition of a second guide seemed to make the whole guiding process way more efficient. The addition of the aussi turned out to make things more inefficient due to bugging the guides and finicky AT equipment, he was dropped after the first run. Some story he must have gotten.

The first run was a 25 minute hike. As we reached our destination high winds blew up and over the cornice of Rope Dee Dope. Roof was already up there knocking a cornice down using his snowboard like a shovel and yelled out, “it’s going to be a few minutes, and the best way to keep for face from getting nipped is to turn away from the wind”! Of course this meant I couldn’t watch this bad ass mountain man take on a cornice on the edge of a massive pitch, so I thought screw it and I let the wind nip away, luckily no frost bite and I got a sweet show. Needless to say, underneath this cornice was a somewhat narrow shoot with a right hand exit which shot you out to a wide open snowfield, perfect for simply ripping turns, we got our Boom Boom Pow Face’s on and shredded.

The next runs were a bit of a blur but one moment which stands out in my mind was the option to either ski strait down the run out trail or follow Roof into the woods to try and get some fresh on a pitch which may have been a little sun baked. Traversing through the woods I found a narrow shoot which ran strait with the fall line and exited the trees with a small lip at the end. I asked the only teli skier in the group, Scott if he wanted it, but he refused the offer. Hop turn to strait, I launched out of the trees onto some harder packed, sun baked snow and ripped what felt like the biggest, fastest three turns of my life in nothing but radiant sunshine while on some fat ass skis, props from the guides, and on with the day.

It was on our last run that Annie would claim her fame as the first Silverton client of the season to ski Sunset, a run which seemed to be a gem among the guides which had not been touched by anyone but a patroller or two weeks earlier. As she slayed first tracks on this epic run the rest of the group witnessed how deep the snow really was and sat back in awe and silence, our wildest dreams don't even conjure up images of snow like this.

At the end of the run, we had the option to go up for one more skied off, short run but decided against it after the experience we just had. Boots off, beers and some light chatter between us and our guide Josh which included talk of his guiding experience, all of our whereabouts and a casual invite to Alaska with the rest of the Silverton crew which was planned for sometime in June, preferred customers of Silverton, no big deal. We kept it cool as we headed out from the base area and celebrated our recently recognized status as bad ass skiers as we dipped out of sight.

On to Telluride to meet up with Liz and her new squeeze who turned out to be a riot, Griffon, your cool with me kid. Personal six packs after a taco dinner just prior to meeting up with the new additions of our shredding duo. From the moment we all met up we were all in stitches, hunched over cracking up due to whatever hysterics were taking place at any given time. Telluride was to be concurred in the morning.