Indirect snowfall...or when 5" is really 10"

I'm not one to exaggerate so believe me when I tell you we had knee deep pow pow on our Sunday tour up to the Cirque de Ski. I'm not sure what to call this place anymore as it's probably pretty obvious from any nickname I produce that is somewhat of a description, so I'm just going to call the general area "Cirque de Ski" cause it's a circus of people, a massive cirque of sorts many embedded in a larger one, and it's the best place to ski within a half hour of my house. Doesn't make sense? Yeah, me neither, I just kinda like how it sounds.

Anyways, a group of four headed high into the alpine Sunday morning after sympathetic snowfall dropped 5 more inches than fell at the local ski area and 8 more inches than they predicted to fall on the NOAA forecast. How's this possible you may ask? Well it's because the freaking wind we get on the Front Range is intense. Most cyclists (and the general population except for windsurfers) hate the wind but Front Range skiers have a a bit of a love/hate relationship with the wind. If we didn't have wind here on the Front Range, we wouldn't get 'blow-over' from Winter Park. In the winter, it typically snows more just over the Divide than on the Front Range...a lot more. In the springtime it reverses with upslopes produced by SW flow from the Gulf. But anyways, places just east of the Divide, such as Cirque de Ski, can sometimes get much more snow than predicted because of the high winds that whip across the Divide. This, in addition to the wind whipping any snow off the west-facing slopes and depositing it onto the NE-SE facing leeward slopes, is why 5" can become 10" in a matter of hours. And if you know where these pockets of 'catch' are, you will find powder runs almost any day of the week. So on Sunday, I had a feeling about a certain area up high where we might find a bunch of catch snow.

The crew today was made up of two Pilots that will go unnamed to protect their careers (backcountry skiing with me may be in their contracts as a boo boo) and Pilot Hayride who has been on a skiing frenzy this winter I might add.

Lots of whoomphing again today, with probably the loudest single collapse that I've ever heard. I actually felt it in my eardrums from the release of pressure - a high avy danger day for sure. What is important to realize here for me and some others is that you can still find excellent turns no matter what the danger - as long as you choose your route well and ski slopes less than 30 degrees that are not adjacent to or below steeper slopes. So that's just what we did.

Another long tour up high, 3000ft of vertical to get to what I used to call Chutes and Ladders but now the young(er) Pilot came up with a better name - Prospector Gullys. There's a mini lake (that his girl dipped a boot into unintentionally while trying to take off her skins) at the bottom of 4 or so lower angle gullys that can be prospected all day....hence the name. A great place to camp a night by the lake and make turns in peace all day.

Above - me trying to chunk off a piece of the cornice. It kinda chunked off, but didn't propagate. Below me and to the left is a south facing 28 degree gully that I've wanted to ski since i saw it last year...and it was as good as i thought it'd be.

Have fun but be careful out there Pilots! More snow on the way tonight into Wednesday night and there's already a Avy Watch alert on CAIC.

Video from the day.