The second day dawned with reports of 7 inches of fresh powder at Vail. After rousing much of the crew excitedly early in the morning (6:30a Mountain Time) excitedly babbling about powder at Vail there was a round robin of discussions of who wanted to go and when they could be ready. Eventually Ted, David L, and myself emerged as the adventurous trio and hurriedly gathered gear and head out from the Hotel at Breckenridge for Vail. Breckenridge had only gotten a couple inches in town, but it was more then enough to turn Hwy 9 (connecting link between Breckenridge and I-70) to a skating rink from compressed blowing snow. We passed two rollovers shortly after leaving and I kept the pace pretty slow, where traffic even allowed me to set my own pace.
After hopping on I-70 things seemed to be a little sketchy but above par for the trip and I ramped up to 60 or so in 2wd. Shortly after we approached an underpass where the freeway took an abrupt right hand turn uphill after going under the bridge. As we approached the curve I noticed a rolled over SUV right after the corner. I immediately wanted to chop speed but didn’t have a good option to do so, as I was in the left lane with someone on my right so I maintained speed in 2wd hoping to move over and slow down after getting through the corner. As soon as we got through the corner there was a semi on the right with two cars pulled off as well, as soon as I took this in we hit the black ice, speed still in the mid 50′s and exiting a pretty good curve while heading up a hill.
The suburban’s tail started to pendulum back and forth, attempting to control this motion caused the front to start sliding. If I throttled on, however slightly, the rear stepped out hard. If I backed off, even to neutral throttle, the front started sliding! We were now rotating back and forth with the center of the vehicle as a pivot point as I alternated on-throttle off-throttle trying to keep the general motion of the nearly out-of-control SUV down the middle of the freeway between the pulled off vehicles at 50 mph. I yelled at David to punch the 4wd button for me while I began to write off an accident free trip and eyed up the large snowbank on the left with the drop to oncoming on the other side of it as a better alternative to hitting a person. After about 10 seconds of this, in which my heart was racing, the 4wd decided it would finally kick in and after a quick blip of the throttle I was able to get on the power in 4wd and regain control by having the front wheels pull me straight. I don’t think anyone else in the car realized that the vehicle was at the outer limits of control for several seconds as they went back to staring out window quietly. I decided that was the biggest rush of the trip so far, and got in the right lane!
After arriving at Vail we quickly suited up in the parking lot and headed up the gondola to start the trek to the back bowls (a non-trivial trip consisting of several traversals and different connection chairlifts just to get into the back bowls!) Upon dropping into the first back bowl run we realized the 7 inch figure had been a conservative number for the front side base, the back bowls had over a foot of powder, and much more in places. I had a powder wave up to my waist on the first back side run! Knee deep was the rule as we made our way down. After following a couple ski patrol guys off a ledge and down a quick little ravine run in which the slots between the trees were barely wider then my shoulders I popped back up and we regrouped to push further back.
We nailed several runs on the way to Blue Sky Basin, taking breaks every 500-1000 feet or so because it was so much effort to turn in the deep powder. It was great fun cutting tracks through a snow field as wide as you can see either direction for over a mile! Eventually we made the requisite run China Bowl jumping snow drifts that were waist high and landing in the powder, we spent an entire day on this run last year.
I convinced the others we need to try Pete’s Bowl however, which is the farthest from the base village you can get in bounds, and covers some steep freestyle terrain including boulders, very steep trees, cornice, and even cliffs! It was a winter wonderland on this side and we quickly migrated to skiing next to the out of bounds rope through the trees in untouched knee deep powder! Back here we found a rock ledge, I thought it would be cool to ski off the side of it for a picture or two. After doing that David started eying up the main ledge which was about 6 feet from top to touch down point vertically. While sizing it up a couple of aggressive skiers came down and popped off of it.
That was all it took for David, he scrambled back up onto the ledge, and after a moment of working up to it launched off of it! As soon as he landed he exclaimed that it was awesome and he wanted to do it again, and land it this time! He got a clean launch, but still bit it on touchdown.
At this point it was time for Ted and I to keep up. Getting atop the ledge we both eyed it up repeatedly. It looked much bigger from the top, and on the approach you couldn’t see the landing over the lip, making it look quite intimidating indeed! Ted debated, seemed about ready to pass on it, then shoved off and launched. He biffed the landing, but seemed to enjoy it and have no broken bones after gathering himself and various ski equipment.
Seeing this, I knew I had to do it now. I clipped in and tried to psych myself up for it. I thought of all the ways it could go wrong and started to get very nervous, on the verge of backing out I yelled “Rolling!” and shoved off. I just dropped off the ledge the first time and fell in the soft powder below. I had barely skidded to a stop when I was scrambling back towards the top. It was such a rush! This time I started a bit higher above the ledge and launched off of it, this time I had enough time in the air to look down and see the ground below and savor the feeling of flying through the air. I still landed heel heavy and slid out on the landing, but enjoyed it thoroughly nonetheless! I decided not to keep taking it as I knew I would quickly escalate things too far trying for distance off of it. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip though!
We rounded out the day, with a few more runs down Pete’s Bowl and then headed back for the base village. We got home uneventfully and crashed at the hotel after an exhausting day of powder skiing.
An Edited Video Clip containing Ted and Ben’s falls off the ledge:
Photo Credits
- Ben Larson
- David Larson
