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Vail, CO 2/10/15 including Prima Cornice

jimk

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Vail, CO 2/10/15 including Prima Cornice

SkiNEwhere and I met up with another friend on 2/10/15 to ski Vail. Conditions were variable, but still pretty dang good. The three preceding days in CO were sunny and gorgeous, perhaps a little too gorgeous and when temps dropped on the night of the 9th accompanied by a couple of inches of snow it made for dust on granite NEwhere:razz: that was ungroomed such as the bowls, glades, and bumps. The daytime high on the slopes was probably about 25-30 degrees. Once we figured out the situation we stuck to the vast array of frontside groomers at Vail for the most part except one memorable foray into a renowned advanced area called Prima Cornice.


Here is a batch of photos (3 groups of 5) illustrating our day at Vail on Feb 10, 2015.

We met near mid-Vail in lingering overnight snow showers and decided to go to Blue Sky Basin hoping the new snow was deeper and less tracked up there.
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SkiNEwhere heading into the nicely spaced Champagne Glade in an area of Blue Sky Basin known as Earl’s Bowl. It wasn’t quite as good as it looked because of the firm surface under the dusting of new snow.
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Returning to the frontside of the mtn we stopped to make homemade chili dogs at Henry’s Hut (yurt). These guys turned me on to the fact that expensive/elitist Vail also provides free use of gas grills for brown baggers at several locations on the mtn and we burned some dogs for a quick and tasty picnic.
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This might be the intermediate run called Ramshorn near the Mountain Top Lift. Kind of pretty with the clouds lifting ain’t it?
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Same area, SkiNEwhere going over a roller. The couple of inches of new snow made the groomers REAL nice.
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jimk

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Game Creek Bowl
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SkiNEwhere had led me safely down some advanced terrain at Beaver Creek and when he offered to guide me on Prima Cornice I thought I’d give it a shot for bragging rights. He skis this stuff fairly often and with aggression. I kind of go into survival mode, but like to at least see what the fuss is all about.
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I gave SkiNEwhere my camera and then didn’t wait for him to shoot :oops: In retrospective giving him the camera was probably a mistake. This is not “you fall, you die” terrain, but I didn’t want to mess around trying to look good for photos. I skied conservatively, a loss of footing here could result in a ten yard tumble. SkiNEwhere would have made for a better camera subject.
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Finished with the hard part.
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Prima Cornice from below
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jimk

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Beneath the open part of the cornice is a glade that is steeper than it looks in this pic; in fact, there was an inbounds avalanche fatality in these woods a few years ago.Copy of DSCN5069.jpg

SkiNEwhere did a great job guiding at Vail and the run down Prima Cornice might have been the best snow we saw all day.
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Here he is exiting the glades beneath Prima Cornice.
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Distant view of Prima Cornice. We came down somewhere in the upper left of this pic and angled through the glades to catch the bumps in center to get out of there.
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We ended the day by skiing to and spectating at the Nations Team Event (part of the World Championships) on Golden Peak for a while. This is Ted Ligety losing to a Swedish racer in the exciting head-to-head slalom elimination format. The Swedish team of three men and three women went on to get a Bronze Medal. Austria got gold and Canada got silver.
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Hey Jim, I'm headed out to Vail this weekend! Any advice on which runs were the best? Were the Back Bowls too icy to enjoy?
 

skiNEwhere

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Prima cornice, and the runs adjacent to it off of the north woods express seem to have the best snow. Off the top of my head, I think all that terrain has eastern exposure.

Back bowls and BSB was all dust on crust :(

When I skied Vail earlier this season in November after a rain storm on top of 6 inches of snow, this held true as well.
 

Mapnut

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Interesting evidence that you can't judge ski conditions by photos. I'd say most of those were brochure-worthy yet they were dust-on-boilerplate.
 

ski stef

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Nice, guys! Seems like an overall great day. I haven't made it over to Vail yet, guess I'll wait for the next storm. Weather has been Spring like out here!
 
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