January 6, 2019

The great white Pow Cow is grazing in the San Juan Mountains!!!!! Colin and I went up to Browns Gulch today! There was at least 30cm of new snow!! And even more up high!! We skinned up the road for over a mile, then split of right into the trees and climbed up the old growth to Anvil Mountain. We set skin track up to just before tree line and called it good there. The snow was so deep up high there! For the first lap we skied this natural West facing half pipe! Party mob!! The snow was so deep!! My board was just floating through the snow and you could not even see it! We were zig sagging back and forth between each other down this awesome low angled shot! We got to the bottom stoked! I had a bad headache… We skinned over and jumped back on our first track! Recycled the skin track and were up top again in ten minutes!! This time we skied into the old growth!! So dope!! Huge trees way up high!! Kind of felt like the PNW. There was tons of room to ski through those trees, with so much snow, and awesome little downed tree pillows to hit!! We dipped out of the trees into the bottom of the slide bath and enjoyed some super fun, open, low angled POWWWWW! After getting to the bottom of the zone we decided to head back down to the car! Skied down the road for a bit, then jumped into one of the shots! It was basically a creek that was finally totally filled in and all caked in POW! It was a blast skiing down that! So much snow!! We kept staying on the little sub ridges to let the slough fall aside us!! Felt like Japowwww! It is stacking up out here in Silverton!! My sled is out of commission for a bit so I will be hanging here hiking a bunch!! SPLITBOARDING IS THE ANSWER!

Snow Report

Browns Gulch zone. New snow was 30cm up high on a conservative estimate. About 20cm at the car at the bottom of Red Mountain Pass. Steep West facing slopes on the hike up on the side of the road has little storm slabs that would break from snow falling off trees. There was an obvious storm slab. You could whack slopes with your pole and watch it collapse. Convex rollovers were womphing. Low angled pow skied great! Steeper slopes would slough big time. Smart ski management provided safe, fun, deep, pow skiing!! Be very cautious out there! Wind was coming from the South. Dumping all day till around 3PM, then got very windy.

I just started putting snow reports at the bottom of the days post. I am no snow expert. We are just out here getting after it everyday and I would love to share my observations to the beautiful ski community!! Be safe! Take faceshots!!!!!