Aspen Snowmass

Today we took the bus out to Snowmass (we're making good use of the free bus system here, which is really excellent). The mountain lived up to expectations of a large choice or runs, but it was really crowded. Being now used to no lift lines (spoiled is more like it), I was rather surprised at how many people we encountered on the lifts where we started. The first run, although deserted, was on crappy snow. So not a very good start to the day. The houses pictured here looked really nice and were right under the first chair (or was it second) that we went up on (Two Creeks).

After Two Creeks we went up Elk Camp and took a couple of cruiser runs there. We didn't spend too much time on any chair, but rather worked our way from East to West. So from Elk Camp, we went down Adams' Avenue and cut down to the Alpine Springs lift, then transferred over to High Alpine. I think we took Reidar's and went down to Sheer Bliss. This was the best lift on the hill. Not crowded, with excellent medium-sloped moguls on the lift line. At the top of the lift you see the Cirque poma lift taking you up on to Rocky Mtn. High. We didn't take this but kept skiing Sheer Bliss after an excellent pizza lunch at Up 4 Pizza.

After a few more runs on Sheer Bliss, we traversed over to Sam's Knob (after first missing it and having to go down to Coney Glade). Took Campground down to the Campground chair and then started working our way back to base. This entailed taking Banzai Ridge, then Trestle, then back down Adam's Avenue, thus ending the day. At the end of the day we had to decide where to return to for our final ski day. It was a tough decision because we had not explored Snowmass fully, but I think partially due to the crowds (it's a big ski school hill as we found out), and partially because there is still some unexplored terrain on Highlands, we chose to return to the Highlands tomorrow. It's also a much shorter bus ride, giving us a bit more time to ski our last day.