Dec 12, 2009

Snowbowl Preseason

The big snow finally fell in Flagstaff, but just not quite enough to open the lifts. I couldn't wait, so I decided to head up anyways and skin up the groomers. The road to Snowbowl was open, so the only other obstacle was making sure they wouldn't mind if I did a couple of laps. I asked a couple of staff up there, and they said it was okay, but just stay outta the cats way who were laying had lines up for dragging snow.

My plan was to skin up from the bottom of Sunrise Chair which sits at 9,200 vf to the top of Agassiz Chair which tops out at 11,500. Heading up the groomers was easy except a couple the steeper slopes hadn't been groomed on my first trip up. Can't complain at all.

It was rather cool up there,spitting snow and low visibility. I had some new Scarpa T-2 tele boots to try out. They were much lighter than my old T-1 bumble bees, and they made the trip up a little more pleasurable. Despite a similar buckle system, they just didn't have the same rigidity, because the don't come up as one my calf. Despite this, I think once a get a few days of running them on the lifts, I get them dialed it. I might also opt the have the liners form fitted, so the fit a little more comfortable.

This was my first trip on the snow since Camp Muir trip the end of June, so I wasn't expecting much in my performance. I did end up doing two laps, for a total of 4,600 feet of ascending. I gotta admit, that I was pretty fatigued at the end of lap number two, but it was a good start to getting my fitness back.

Not much video footage, but here is short vid of what I got:

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