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Vail Mountain : Vail, Colorado : Trip Report

Sixth and final day at Vail Mountain

We woke up to find it snowing. Hard! There were already several inches of fresh snow on the ground. The Vail Channel mountain report said about 9" of snow at the top. Awesome!

We wanted to save time getting to the "good parts" of the mountain by taking a bus to Vail Village and taking the Vista Bahn chair. When we go to Mid Vail we found a horribly long line for the Mountain Top Express but from the chair we saw all the lower runs still had fresh powder with hardly any tracks on them yet. We did a couple lower runs in fresh powder with no crowds before even attempting to go up the mountain.

One there we did one of our favorite runs, The Slot, with fresh powder. It was much more challenging as there was still icy snow under the powder but it was still a lot of fun. We tried to make our way to Blue Sky Basin but so did everyone else. We did the tree run off the Cloud 9 run once and I got really stuck in the snow. Took me several minutes to dig myself out.

After a lunch at Two Elks Lodge we did the China Bowl, I think it was the Chopsticks run. It was even more challenging than The Slot. It was very steep at parts but there were also flat sections and it was very difficult to get enough momentum in the steep parts to make it through the flat parts with all the deep powder slowing us down.

We did a couple more runs before we started to head back down the mountain. Around that time the sun came out and made what was fresh powder into a heavy wet snow that really slowed you down when going over it. At that point it was just easier to ride through other people's tracks. At the very bottom the snow was very sticky and felt like you were pulling a parachute.

It was still an amazing way to end an excellent trip!

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