Mid-Winter

As we settled into the winter routine the weather mellowed a bit and we found a happy rhythm.  The ski school was a good fit for me.  With my prior experience I was assigned to the adult section of the school. I got work when I wanted it and was teaching all levels including the coveted NFL tours.  These "lessons" are when and advanced skier just wants a tour of CB's expert terrain.  It's basically getting paid to ski fun terrain all day.  And regardless of lesson levels I almost always got an hour of free ski time in the mornings which was plenty to get several laps in some of Colorado's best terrain.

The Peak

Laurel discovered that the benefits of being a first time instructor don't include much pay.  You get a free pass, lots of training opportunities (free lessons), plenty of friends to ski with but teaching little kids is hard despite how cute they are.  In the end the monetary compensation doesn't seem to match the effort the new instructors put forth (some watchdog group really should investigate the resorts.....).  The bright side of the financial equation is that Laurel was able to keep some of her hours from the UW nursing school and work remotely.

During my free ski time one goal was to capture (via photo) the "Extreme Limits" (EX) terrain of CB.  The Butte is famous for the chutes and bowls accessible from the High Lift and North Face T-bars.  The terrain makes up about 1/3 of total ski area acreage and even though I wouldn't consider it "extreme" it is an amazing playground of steeps including cliffs, chutes, bowls, funnels, rocks, drops, trees and other features.  It's one of the big reasons we chose this resort.  I knew that I would want good terrain to explore when the snow wasn't fantastic and CB has everything that I'd hoped for.  It turns out that trying to photographically capture this terrain is very difficult.  It's just too three dimensional.  The photos only could grab little pieces so until Google makes a virtual 3D CB explorer you'll just have to trust me that there's a ton of good stuff out here!

Headwall

The snow was another element that drew us to CB.  The seasonal forecast based on the strong El Nino cycle was that southern Colorado should do very well.  It turns out that forecasting the Butte isn't very accurate.  Mt. CB stands alone in the center of a ring mountain ranges.  To the west is a divide which catches the majority of the weather.  Mt. CB is technically in a rain shadow and the best snow falls only when the storms blow in perfectly from the WSW.   Our total number of big pow days was very few.  The reported base never broke 60 inches.  But despite the low numbers the mountain skied incredibly well.  I can't recall a bad day.  Days when we only picked up a few inches it would blow in and refresh the surface making everything creamy.  Even after weeks without snow the surface stayed cold and chalky.  In the end it was the terrain that makes this mountain great and when the storm does come it's icing on the cake.

EX Terrain

Rare Pow

On the other side of the snowfall spectrum are the West Elks.  Near the divide they catch the weather and it dumps.  Lake Irwin regularly reports 600+ inches of snow annually where CB this season received ~170 inches.  That's why anyone who likes to ski pow in this town owns a sled.  5-10 miles up Kebler Pass and you can be in a much snowier place.  I'll be looking for one if we come back.

As winter moved along we happily skied the chalky resort snow, explored new terrain when we had the opportunity and made some forays into the backcountry in search of softer pow.  We didn't get many visitors even though the invitation was out there.  Getting here is actually one reason why the whole CB valley is still so pristine.  It's a five hour drive from Denver where you can get cheap flights or a really expensive flight into Gunnison.  Ryan bit the bullet and drove from Denver for a tour of they valley.  It's hard coming from sea level to 10,000 feet but he pushed his cardio limit and knocked out several long ski tours and some resort days.  I expect payback when we are on bikes together again.

Similar to getting into CB was getting out.  We had everything we needed right here and there was no reason to leave.  In fact there was barely a reason to drive a car.  We could walk to work in the mornings, all of 5 minutes.  If we wanted to go into town there was a free bus that ran every 15 minutes.  The only time we drove was on a weekly trip to Gunnison for groceries otherwise the car just rested.  My records show that between December and March we only bought a tank of gas once a month.  After living a car-centric life for so many years this was very enjoyable change of pace.

The one foray I did make out of the valley was to Monarch, a smaller ski hill just out of Gunnison.  They seemed to be in a stronger weather pattern this winter and an 18 inch storm coincided with days off so I headed over to ski the deep.  The hill was tiny, only 4 slow double chairs but with 18 inches of new and not a lot of people it made for a great break from CB.  This was the only time I left the valley all season.

Untouched lines at Monarch

Ryan rips the Colorado pow

Gothic

Top of the Elks