The Alta Bar – Energy Elevated Alta is a bit of a hot spot for the next new thing. From 4frnt skis to Saga outerwear, to Pit Vipers and Panda Poles, Alta is the place to look now if you want to know what’s going to be cool next year. If you still eat Power Bars, well this article is probably not worth your time. However, if you have been eating […] Gear Aaron Rice | January 23, 2015 0 Comments
Alta Conditions Report – January Doldrums Whelp, there’s no way to beat around the bush on this one. We are in a deep dry spell here in Alta. The only thing keeping us going is a good base from a productive December and early January, and knowing how rough California has it (sorry). Words like chalky and buffed-out have replaced words like powder and blower. And with no burning need for first chair, the bars are full from apres to closing time. We did receive a couple very small storms. One dropped a couple inches of grauple with some wind that made for […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | January 22, 2015 0 Comments
Alta Condtitions Report – Bluebird Above Valley Inversions This past week has been a bit of a conditions roller coaster. We ended a long period of high pressure with a 21 inches storm that had some of the highest intensity snow of the season for a few morning hours. The storm came in hard and left in a hurry leaving us with a couple gorgeous bluebird days. Monday was an insane day! it snowed 21 inches of snow with 11 inches falling in 4 hrs. It was […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | January 15, 2015 0 Comments
Alta Conditions Report – Bluebird for Days! For many people in Alta last week was the best week of skiing they had had in years. As in anything in life, with the good comes the bad. Lucking this is Alta, so bad is really still pretty descent. I like to say that in Alta it is either snowing hard or bluebird, and this past week has not let us down. Though it has been dry, it has been absolutely gorgeous and ski patrol has been able to drop some ropes, most notably on […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | January 8, 2015 0 Comments
Alta Conditions Report – 81″ of Snow in Ten Days! Alta ended 2014 on a high note! A series of storms dropped 81″ of successively lighter snow, leaving us with some epic (and I don’t use this term lightly) powder skiing. The storms lifted and we are now in a period of high pressure, but there is still great snow out there and with cold temps the skiing is still fantastic. I won’t be to wordy with this post, and I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy! Midstorm riding conditions were as deep as they get. Bluebird Wasatch powder skiing the way it should […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | January 1, 2015 1 Comment
Alta Conditions Report – Goldilocks and Santa Claus It has been quite the weeks here in Alta. A big storm dropped 32 inches of dense snow, with over 4 inches of water weight. The mountain was shut down for an afternoon and a morning. We had 2 consecutive morning with interlodge, and some of the stronger wind gust seen in the last decade. The skiing was good during the storm, but with the denseness of the snow and the […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | December 25, 2014 2 Comments
Alta Storm Causing Delays – 2 Day Timeline The past 36 hours we have been experiencing very large storm. A moisture plume has been aimed straight off the Pacific Ocean and up Little Cottonwood Canyon. Here’s a quick timeline of the past couple days. Saturday 12/20 @ 11am: Snow beings to fall, but is scattered and mostly light to moderate. Saturday 12/20 @ 8pm: Snow rates drop off over the evening and temperatures rise a bit. Sunday 12/21 @ 4am: Snow rates pick up, it is warm and the density is very high. Sunday 12/21 @ 9:15am: We have received 6 inches of snow and lifts open on time. Sunday 12/21 @ 10:30am: The skiing is really good. Conditions Report Aaron Rice | December 22, 2014 5 Comments
Alta Conditions Report: Surprise Storm With More to Come This past week has really felt like winter here in Alta. With 14″+ on Saturday and a low sun, we have been skiing great powder. ast Saturday we were forecasted to receive 3-6 inches of snow. Well, with a bit of Alta magic, we ended up with 14 inches. This storm was a Goldilocks storm. Not too little snow and not too much (that avalanche danger became a big deal), it was also […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | December 17, 2014 0 Comments
Alta, UT Conditions Report: High and Dry, With Snow on the Way It’s been high and dry here in Alta for over a week now. But luckily the sun is low angle and the snow has remained good. The groomers have been soft and fast all day. There has been enough snow to open backside and tower ten traverse and there are good chalky turns to be found out there. For the weekend there is a storm arriving that should be in the 6-12 inch range. In Alta it is generally frowned upon to ski the tower ten traverse and the ski school traverse on backside. However, with low snow conditions right now, they are our […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | December 10, 2014 2 Comments
Arapahoe Basin, CO Conditions Report: Sun, Snow, and Terrain at A-Basin! The forecast was for overcast with highs in the low 30’s. It hasn’t snowed anything appreciable in over a week in Colorado. I had low expectations. However, I was very pleasantly surprised today. The snow was edgeable and fast from top to bottom on the groomers and fun and chalky elsewhere. Being a Friday, we had the mountain to ourselves (by Colorado standards). For most of the rest of the day we skied Pali. The conditions started a bit chunky, but the more people that skied it the chalkier it got. By the end of the day it was skiing very well! […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | December 5, 2014 1 Comment
Stowe, VT Conditions Report: Lake-Effect Snow Rocks Vermont The skiing at Stowe this morning was deep! About 8 inches of fresh on a few inches from the past few days. The snow was light and fluffy. In honesty there was a bit of crust underneath the new snow, but it was still the best turns on the East coast of the season. We fell asleep on Tuesday night with the plan to do a quick dawn patrol at Stowe. The forecast was for 1-3 inches and our hopes were pretty low, but we wanted to get out and see the sunrise and move our legs. We woke up this morning at 5:30 am to 3 inches at the house. We got excited and pulled into the dark and unplowed Stowe parking lot 15 minutes later. […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | November 20, 2014 0 Comments
1ft+ of Snow Forecasted for Alta! NOAA.org and Wasatch Snow Forecast are calling for the first(sorta second) good storm of the season for Alta, UT! WSF is calling for “Total accumulations by Sunday should be 6-12+” above 7,000 feet”. Read the full report here. If you believe the NOAA point forecast, it is calling for 12-26″ by Sunday morning. I find that a bit hard to believe… The snow has just begun to fall in LCC. The Alta cams are all down or not refreshing at this point in time […] Weather Aaron Rice | November 13, 2014 0 Comments
Spring Skiing in Bariloche – Patagonia, Argentina Here in Bariloche, Argentina we just received a very late season storm that was one of the biggest of the whole year (read about it here). However being fairly far North at 41°S our brief relapse into winter quickly fell back to spring. With the return of spring and a renewed snowpack, we were able to explore a new area. Worried about the strong sun, Mark and I met up at 4:45am and drove over to the Cerro Lopez trailhead. As we hiked the sun quickly rose above Laguna Nahuel Huapi. We took a nice break at Refugio Lopez and let the sun warm our sleepy selves up. […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | November 10, 2014 0 Comments
Monster Late-season Storm – 150cm+ of Powder in Bariloche, Argentina! Patagonia is known for it’s big mountains and impressive winds. The mountains attract the skiers and the winds often leave them disappointed. However sometime the weather gods are nice. Last week I was down in southern patagonia hiking and skiing and continually getting shut down by weather. The forecast for Bariloche was for and impressively cold system for this time of […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | November 7, 2014 3 Comments
Patagonia Backcountry Report: Touching the Sky in Volcano Land Casablanca Volcano, Chile We woke up in our tents parked along the access road up to the Casablanca Volcano. The night had been perfectly clear with a quarter moon and great stargazing. The morning was crisp and clear. We had breakfast and a few cups of hot tea. South America is converting me to a tea with milk and sugar drinker. We drove the short distance to the Antillanca ski area. The wind was nuking at 40-60kph sustained. We were a bit nervous but there was little cloud cover and no storms looked […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | October 2, 2014 0 Comments
Inbounds Avalanche in Antillanca, Chile Almost Takes Out Lift After a large storm followed by warm weather, an inbounds avalanche in Antillanca Ski Area almost took out a lift tower. The slide likely occurred during the first warmup on September 29th after a storm from September 26th – 28th. Antillanca is a small, locals ski hill, about 100km from the city of Osorno in Chile. It is unknown if the slide was intentionally triggered by avalanche control work or released naturally. The slope aspect was SE. Upon […] Avalanche Aaron Rice | October 2, 2014 0 Comments
Summer Skiing Still Going Off in Colorado! We got an alpine start and headed up to ski the tuning fork earlier this week. Right away we both saw the stunning East facing line off Grizzly Peak D. We decided to ski Grizzly Couloir instead. It’s high walls and very thin but continuous strip of snow made it a very aesthetic line, though the snow left a bit to be desired. The skiing was thin and great! There was a good bit of ice in the snow and a bunch of fallen rocks on the snow, but the middle section was soft and smooth, just the way snow should be in late July! With our early start we still had time to ski the Tuning Fork. So we […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | July 26, 2014 1 Comment
Solid Colorado Summer Skiing: Skyscraper A perfect Colorado day allowed us to get an early start and walk the ridge out to Skyscraper. We skied a picturesque line right down to Bob Lake. The snow was firm yet soft. A bit bumpy, but nothing unmanageable, pretty dirty, but not too sticky. The top of the line had a good sized bergschrund that we had to avoid. So if the 95 degree heat in the plains is getting to you, just know that there is plenty of snow to be had, it just takes an early start and a short walk. […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | July 21, 2014 1 Comment
Summer Skiing in COLORADO!! Many lines to choose from up in Clear Creek County. We were able to drive up to just above 12,000ft. Then we cherry picked the best lines right from the car. We had to do a bit of ridge walking. Great flowers, scenery and clouds made the walk easy. With lots of people we tracked out a couple lines. There were still some very large cornices hanging on up top. The skiing was fantastic! Long, thin, fairly steep ribbons of snow right off the summit! With good snow and good weather another couple laps was an easy decision. […] Conditions Report Aaron Rice | July 14, 2014 0 Comments
High Pressure Chuting in LCC Well, its officially spring here in the Wasatch. Its been sunny and warm for two weeks with no snow in sight for the near future. Not the worst thing though, with the warmth comes increased stability. So we set our sights on the south-facing chutes in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Each chute having at least 3000 feet of vertical and slopes […] Aaron Rice | January 24, 2014 0 Comments
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