Fifth day at Vail Mountain

The forecast called for a winter storm to pass through over night dumping untold inches of snow. We had heard that Mammoth Mountain had received 2 feet of snow the previous day and that storm was headed this way. We got up early and tuned into the Vail Channel and found there was only 1" of new snow! Despite that we were still glass pushers and waiting at the gondola before it opened.

It continued to snow until about noon but we only got about 3" total of new snow. It was also much colder and windy which made conditions much more challenging than we've experienced all week.

We did a couple of the back bowls but since the slush from the previous warm days was now frozen we tried to stick to the groomed runs. The ungroomed runs were "extra challenging" today as everything under the fresh snow was hard ice.

We enjoyed a bunch of tree runs off the Cloud 9 run as well as the fun runs off the Pete's Express Lift. This ended up being our longest day on the mountain of the week despite the challenging conditions. By late afternoon the wind was really ripping. Being at the top of the mountain was getting very unpleasant.

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The grooming machines were kept busy this day.	Are we ready for this?	Mark loses his skiis.
Ted keeps warm at Eagles Nest.	Where do we go now Ted?	Coming down a groomed bowl.
Going down the Slot.	Even Ted falls sometimes.	Look out for the rocks.
Mark in the trees.	Lily in the trees.	Ted, John and Susan.
Hurry up!	Why are we doing this run again?	Sue makes it look so easy.
Tree runs are fun.	Ted action shot.

Comments From People Like You! Vail Mountain 4 : Vail, Colorado 2006	add a comment
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