Dragon Tail/Variable Conditions Testing

After hearing about some killer spring skiing being done in Rocky Mountain National Park, Chris and I were hungry for some good corn snow and some steep turns.  After looking at the weather and checking our school schedules, we both realized that Wednesday was looking like we could squeeze some skiing in.  The weather was supposed to be clear until around noon, when a small storm was headed in, which was fine because I had a dentist appointment at 10am back in Boulder.  We figured that if we got up real early, we could get on top of something fun by about 8, when hopefully the sun had a little time to warm 'er up, and then haul ass back to the car so I could make it to the dentist.

2:45 AM.  Our idea of early.

At 2:45AM we grabbed our resolutions, loaded up the car, and took a quick trip to the 24 hour supermarket for the essentials.  With Snickers bars, Beef Jerky, and DayQuil, we were on our way to the park.  The Bear Lake parking lot was absolutely empty when we showed up (surprise, surprise), but we did see three other brave souls unpacking their car at the Glacier Gorge lot on our way up.  Lucky for us, and them, it was a beautiful night, with quite a view of the stars.

pit stop on the skin up in the dark

 The sun finally poked up around 6ish when we were out of the trees and into the alpine on flat top, bathing us in some gorgeous pink rays and revealing a great view of Longs Peak.

View of Longs Peak from Flattop

As the sun lit up the ridge line, we could see fog down in the valley and some ominous looking clouds headed in from the west.  It was looking like the storm was going to be a little early.  By about 7 the visibility went, and every once in a while you'd feel a little flake of snow on your jacket.  Once the clouds moved in, we knew that there was no way we were going to get any corn snow, but with our early deadline we figured before we left the snow might be pretty hard regardless of the weather.  When we poked around into dragon tail at about 7:30, we were pretty stoked to have a good pocket of visibility, being able to see all the way down to the lake.

Chris about to drop in

We could tell from the top that the snow was going to be hard, so Chris volunteered to drop in first, ski all the way down through the choke, and then radio up for me to drop in.  Once Chris got down to a good safe zone he radioed up to me and gave me the down-low.  "Yeahhhh it's pretty icy.  Couple a' good turns skiers left, above and during the choke, followed by a pretty gnarly sheet of ice.  A little slough-age through the choke, but other than that she's pretty bulletproof most of the way. VERY variable conditions, so be ready for anything."  I dropped in, finding some pretty gnarly conditions.  There were definitely a few sections of pretty good snow, but they would often end very abruptly to some pretty gnarly ice sheets.  After meeting up with Chris after the choke, we decided that we had really put our skis to the first hard-core test in some seriously variable conditions, and joked about how happy we were that they had passed.  The ski out the rest of apron down to the lake was relatively similar to the top, although you could definitely let the skis run a bit more, simply due to the open terrain.  The bottom section had some of the stranger snow conditions I've ever experienced.  It was like skiing on a cheap melted and refrozen sunday, where very top layer is a tiny bit sugary and scrapes off easily, and underneath is hard ice.

Me at the bottom

After the ride we hustled back to the car and headed back to Boulder, where I totally made it to my dentist appointment on time!  Oh, and I almost forgot.  Here's a little vid of Chris tearing it up in these gnarly conditions on his resolutions.

-Tom Meiners