 Poster: A snowHead
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Greetings, Snowheads, from sunny California. I've been conferring madly for the last few days, having blown away my jet-lag with 4 days in WINTER PARK, Colorado.
As promised: a report on my trip.
- Not a great start: getting there was one of the most stressful trips of my life, what with delayed trains to Manchester airport leading to a just-in-time check-in (no hold baggage, thank God) followed by the mother of all Immigration queues at Washington DC (made a French lift-line seem civilised).
Despite having (I thought) a comfortable 3-hour transfer time for my onward flight to Denver, a late arrival (stacked up over DC) coupled with the immigration computers crashing at the very moment I got to the end of the line led to a desperate sprint across the terminal to board my flight seconds before closure.
Arrival in Denver, and everything's GREAT. Shuttle to the resort, and a free room upgrade on arrival (Winter Park Mountain Lodge: highly recommended, and it has its own microbrewery).
Up early (thanks to the circadian rhythms), and pick up a pair of skis in the hotel's rental shop in good time to catch the first lift. (Dynastar something 4800, for the gearheads: a good pair of boards) - Oh yeah. It's snowing.
WP is a good mountain. Much bigger than it looks on the trail map, with a range of terrain and with the trail grading remarkably accurate, in describing the relative degrees of difficulty.
The first lift from the base area gets you up to a spot wher you've a choice of runs variously graded green, blue, blue-black and black: the blue trail called "Cranmer" is a cracking warm-up: it's just the right pitch to let you build up a head of steam, without being too steep that your unaccustomed muscles lose control. A long fast cruise that lets you get the blood circulating.
From the bottom, you can either go straight up and do it again, or start to move across the hill to the rest of the mountain. - It takes two more lifts to get you to the top of Mary Jane: a lot higher, and with acces to steeper and more challenging terrain. This is bump capital, USA. Every run with a black-diamond grading is covered in the little b*gg*rs. (Actually, not so little) - in fact this holds true throughout the area. There are no"easy" black runs: this is not the place to go if you're the sort of person who can get down a smooth but steep black-diamond and then claim to be a "black run skier": you have to know what you're doing.
Or you can take a slow double chair to the top of the area and access the Parsenn Bowl: a wide-open area above the tree line where there's a vast choice of the lines you can pick. And on the first day it had 3 inches of fresh powder. On the second day, it had 8 inches: we got the tail-end of the big storm that trashed California and dumped several feet on Utah. Even after most of this was tracked out, there wers still stashes in the trees for the next couple of days. (when the temperature dropped, but the sun shone). Woooo-hooooo.
I cannot recommend this hill too much. Four days was simply not enough to experience the variety. I'm determined to go back, as soon as my budget (and Mrs. Acacia) allow. 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Acacia, great review, thanks for that 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Acacia, Did you make it into the Cirque? Off the top of the Timberline chair, and hike up to your right.
I had a season pass for Winter Park for 3 years. That's how good I thought it was!
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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