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| Dad at Highlands. |
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Dad just left for a backcountry ski trip so it’s PAYBACK time for all those photos of me he’s posted on this blog.
Last weekend we went skiing. Saturday was opening day for Deep Temerity on Aspen Highlands. It’s a new lift beside Highlands Bowl which opens up lots of new terrain, and you can only get to it by skiing double-blacks. It extends Highlands Bowl and the Temerity runs to about double their length. The lift goes up 1,700 vertical feet in 7.3 minutes and adds about 800 feet of runs. I’ve been watching them build the new lift all summer and was anxious to explore it. So when they opened it on Saturday, we tried it out. Unfortunately it was too crowded so after one run we took Aspen’s hybrid bus to Ajax. These new hi-tech eco buses cost $600,000 each! But that’s another story. Back to skiing: Ajax was great as always and after skiing all day I went home to do homework. On Sunday, after church, we tried Highland’s again. We got there about 10:00 and there were no lift lines, just the way we like it!
It’s been really cold this week. Last Wednesday it was 17 degrees at lunch. Sunday was sunny. It hasn’t been windy so the trees were still covered by snow from our last storm. With the blue skies and snow covered trees it looks nice. It was warmer too which is good because my jacket from last year is too small and I am waiting for a new one.
I like the double-blacks down to the new Deep Temerity lift. The snow was soft and choppy with only a few pungy sticks showing. It was easy skiing…Mom even beat us to the lift line. But after only two runs, they wanted to stop for lunch (see photo of Dad above). I grabbed a free cookie and kept on skiing.
I’ve been waiting for Highlands Bowl to open. The lift operator said it wouldn’t open this weekend, but I noticed the patrol moving one of the border fences so I hiked up part of the ridge. The whole bowl was still closed but they opened one side and I skied that. B-1 gully (the top part of the bowl) is closed and there’s a big fracture line from a recent avalanche. I can’t wait till they open the whole thing. We need a storm this week to cover up the slide path.
Back home at 3:00 to get my homework done – uggg. One more week of school and then I have two weeks of Christmas break and then I’ll be skiing EVERY day. Can’t wait for that!
Louie Dawson earned his Bachelor Degree in Industrial Design from Western Washington University in 2014. When he’s not skiing Mount Baker or somewhere equally as snowy, he’s thinking about new products to make ski mountaineering more fun and safe.
