The Year of the Angry Inch or Lovely Loveland

So it's not too terribly often that I post anything about the inbounds area that I like to ski at, so after a surprise powder day at Loveland this Saturday I figured it might be time to change that.
It has been a lean year to say the least, storm after storm has crapped out and left us with an inch, a dusting or worse, swung south and dumped 5 inches plus of snow on Denver.
Having looked at the forecast the Saturday night, my good friend Brandon and I had decided to head to Loveland, I had a comp pass for him and the forecast was calling for enough snow that we figured the ridge would make for some excellent skiing. First thing I did when I woke up was hop on the computer and check the snow report. One Freakin' Inch. Again. Well, plans had already been made and so we hopped in the car and decided to head up to the Land of the Love and make the best of it.
We got there a little before first chair and spent the morning ripping around south chutes and different parts of the ridge. It was pretty good, surprisingly good for an inch but nothing to write a blog post about. Then, just before lunch, Justin, Brandon and I decided to take one of the longer hikes on the ridge and go check out Supernova. This was kind of a gamble as Supernova has a tendency to get wind hammered or sun baked faster than most of the other stuff on the ridge, but the sun hadn't really graced us with it's presence, except for a few lonely weak rays peaking through the clouds here and there, and the wind had been surprisingly gentle. For those who are not the Loveland Cognoscenti, if there's any wind anywhere in the Front Range the Ridge at Loveland is usually a vortex of hurricane force gales. It's great. It smoothes out snow in some areas, while hammering others and chases lesser mortals off to the less windy resorts. But these usual tempests had not shown up today so we figured we'd give it a hike and see what we found.
There were very very few tracks in Supernova once we reached the lower reaches, and from the few that were there I could see deep looking troughs. Thinking to myself, well at least it will be soft-I hucked off the cornice and was immediatly engulfed in snow on my first turn. Holy crap, this is freaking deep! was my only thought and I shifted into my second turn.



Video of the Author enjoying the hidden pow on Supernova

Each turn yielded a waist deep or greater shot, and all too soon I was standing at the bottom. My cries of joy must have inspired Justin and Brandon because before I had a chance to look up they were skiing up next to me both with powder shots gleaming there faces. Needless to say we spent the rest of the day harvesting that slope! Here's some video from the carnage, shot from Justin's Iphone, hopefully I'll have Brandon's video soon too, which I'll make sure to post here as well as he's got a great shot where I almost look like I know what I'm doing and then proceed to eat it big time.


Brandon diggin the big lines and wishing he didn't live in California

I've been saying it a lot this year, and with so many folks so negative about the weather it has been easy to get sucked in and say that the ski season this season sucks, but there are always ways to make the most of it. You can head out and enjoy the seasons, find those hidden gems where it still might not be the most blower day ever, but boot deep and knee to waist deep are still fun. And lord knows skiing and a day in the mountains sure is fun.