Seven Springs

I met up with Quigley, Buchness, Tom & Julie in Breezewood the other day and we went to Seven Springs. We all really wanted to go to White Grass or Laurel Mountain for backcountry turns, but we knew there wasn't enough base for backcountry. None of them had any turns yet this season, so they were particularly desperate. They needed to get their legs some work before their western road trip where they'll be skinning 7 miles into this hut in the 10th Mountain Division system.

Then they get to spend 3 days yo-yo'ing anything they want from the hut. Then they have 2 more weeks of bumming and skiing with Tom's friend in Aspen, and mtn bike buddies Glen and Jens in Salida. Tom and Barry have been getting some Level 1 avalanche training and they're hoping to practice digging some pits instead of digging each other out of something.

Oh yea, Seven Springs looked nothing like this Saturday, but it was still a great time. Five of us on tele gear, ripping lap after lap at the same pace. 7Springs is a decent place, it actually looks and feels like a real ski area, like old Vermont or Colorado. It doesn't have big vertical, but it has interesting terrain features, the mountain is cut wide open so you can ski anywhere, and you even have to do a little work to get to certain places. The natural snow trails and the glades had some brown and thin spots, but, they were open. Most places woulda roped off anything that wasn't crushed velvet. It's a lot different than the straight up straight down skiing at Whitetail that I've been doing so much of lately.