Keystone 2/5/17

Conditions: PP to Firm


We headed to Keystone for SB Sunday turns. We did not have a real plan out side of skiing some of the back peaks beyond Dercum. In particular, we wanted to ski The Outback. Turns out we never made it. I wanted to hit a few bump runs and conditions looked pretty good. In the end we only did two bumps runs and my wife was not thrilled - she dislocated her knee while at the Summit at Sugarloaf last season and according to the x-ray, she actually fractured her knee cap as well. She kept skiing into June and still is now but it has been getting worse and after a trip to the Ortho, the doc told her no bumps. Oops! She felt it was going to be OK but mid way down the second run she was feeling it, with no way out. We then went to the beach chairs at the base of Santiago Express for a Bloody Mary and an IPA to give her knee a break. I was feeling bad. BTW the bumps were a combo of firm with some soft snow but skied nice.

After that Experience, I started looking at the grooming report and found Starfire to be groomed and opted for a steeper run. I do find that Keystone Blues have decent pitch and there are runs that would be classified as black at most resorts back east. Starfire was pretty firm with a layer of PP so there was some scraping going on but it still tracked really well. My wife was skiing groomers really fast so we stuck to those for the next couple hours. We headed back to the front-side and skied Wild Irishmen, Paymaster and Frenchmen as they were skiing real fast. We were taking the rollers and launching which seemed really fun, we were also playing with fun spots off the the sides of the trails. When we went in for lunch we decided to ski off Peru Express and let our son play in the park for a bit and skied Go Devil which is a really nice run with intermediate bumps. We had a great day and really enjoyed how fast everything was.

There was a Patroller that picked us out of the lift line which was a little long and had us cut to the front with him which was cool.

where are pics?
why did patroller pull you out of line?

gmcunni said:

where are pics?
why did patroller pull you out of line?

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He was going up by himself and need three people. He said they usually pick a family. He also recommended Mary Jane.

Pics!

North Peak



Part of Area 51



Go Devil



Under Peru Express



Bump Break



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Down Mineshaft



Up Mineshaft



Son going over feature in Area 51 with town as back drop



Under Peru Express before Area 51



Beach chairs at Santiago Express base - real cool vibe here




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Looks real nice! That is a real shame about the bumps though! Your reports have definitely put Keystone higher up on my radar for any future trips to Colorado.

I absolutely get where you are coming from. My wife had her knee "rebuilt" several years ago and can only take limited bumps (low angle mostly). We had one late afternoon run in Colorado, which we really hit by accident, where she tensed up and took a while to get down. (bad light didn't help either). We've stopped for the "bloody" (her) and "R&C" (me) many times.

Alex

Lake Hopatcong, NJ

Jully said:

Looks real nice! That is a real shame about the bumps though! Your reports have definitely put Keystone higher up on my radar for any future trips to Colorado.

Click to expand...

It is definitely worth it! Fast lifts, with a lot of terrain below tree line - like a New England resort on steroids! Cash in hand cat skiing above tree line. Wide open and tighter trees, pretty darn good bump runs. And you can ski 290 acres after dark until 8 PM all on one lift ticket. There are two different base areas - one on the Peru Express side that feels more old school and then the village side which a cool place to walk around for a bit.

Parking is tough, but there are free parking shuttles and they are convenient (what we have done a few time now). Parking close cost $'s and usually a line.

my 2 cents!

only skied KStone once several years ago. your comment of "new england on steroids" is how i remember most of today. i was skiing with my kids and we stayed mostly on what i ignorantly called the first tier of the mountain. it wasn't until later in the day that we went back to the higher peaks and i found that much more enjoyable... but it was early in our trip and daughter was badly affected by the altitude in the afternoon so we cut the day short.

dlague said:

It is definitely worth it! Fast lifts, with a lot of terrain below tree line - like a New England resort on steroids! Cash in hand cat skiing above tree line. Wide open and tighter trees, pretty darn good bump runs. And you can ski 290 acres after dark until 8 PM all on one lift ticket. There are two different base areas - one on the Peru Express side that feels more old school and then the village side which a cool place to walk around for a bit.

Parking is tough, but there are free parking shuttles and they are convenient (what we have done a few time now). Parking close cost $'s and usually a line.

my 2 cents!

Click to expand...

How far are the free lots that require a shuttle? I find busses to be better then driving when the routes when the route when reasonable priced and routes work well.

gmcunni said:

only skied KStone once several years ago. your comment of "new england on steroids" is how i remember most of today. i was skiing with my kids and we stayed mostly on what i ignorantly called the first tier of the mountain. it wasn't until later in the day that we went back to the higher peaks and i found that much more enjoyable... but it was early in our trip and daughter was badly affected by the altitude in the afternoon so we cut the day short.

Click to expand...

I think North Peak and Outback are the better sections. The front side is made up of greens and blues. The blue trails on the front are really good runs though and very long. The Gondola travels about 1.8 miles from the Village to top of Dercum so every run is 2 + miles. But very few bump runs.

The other peaks have shorter runs but better pitch. The two bump runs on north peak pictured above are a little longer than Superstar at Killingon and have a constant steeper pitch but overall equal average pitch as Superstar.

I have a friend out in CO who swears by those Ruby and Santiago chairs coming out of North Peak base at Keystone. Says he has gotten more than 70k vert at Keystone in a day using them.

Ruby does not have many trail options but Santiago has a boat load.

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