Brighton
Sunday 9 March 1997

Weather

Sunny with clear skies.

Conditions

Powder and packed powder. A small amount of fresh snow overnight. The main runs were well skied. Some of the off-piste areas were crud, others still had 6-12 inches of soft powder.

Overall

Skied with Walter Stahlecker. A short morning, curtailed by an injury to Walter's back, but six extremely challenging runs.

From the beginning of the morning, Walter Stahlecker and I were determined that we would be stretching ourselves. We made straight for the Great Western quad lift to the top of the most challenging area of the resort.

Our first run started easy enough, as we cruised down the groomed Elk Park ridge. However, from the ridge, we took one of the most difficult of the groomed trails, the steep and narrow Desperado.

The second run took us further along Elk Park ridge and down the wide open (ungroomed) slope beyond Desperado, where there was a challenging mixture of powder and crud.

On the third run, we turned left at the top of the lift into the "Experts only" area. A small cornice led to a steep area through trees where the snow was in tremendous condition, lots of powder and no crust. There were one or two narrow chutes through trees, but for the most part the slope was comfortably wide. [We took this particular route for all subsequent runs]. We proceeded down the top of Wranger, again ungroomed and cut off under the lift, an area where the trail was narrow and the snow was not in good condition, ending up on the steep but groomed Aspen Glo. Near the bottom, there was an area to the left of the Great Western run itself which was mogulled in the centre and soft powder at the edges.

Run four took us back along the ridge and through the trees between Rockin' R and Silver Spur where the snow was in much better condition than further along.

On run five, we got into seriously challenging terrain. Bearing left at the top of the ungroomed Wrangler we got into definite off-piste territory, with a narrow steep powdery chute and a long flatter run out with some lines to ski and some untracked powder.

We returned to the same place for run six, but kept further left. We were making good headway and getting to the seriously steep and narrow areas when Walter hurt his back, so we chose to traverse across to an "easier" section. This proved to be an extremely steep run, which although wide, had a lot of loose snow that slipped with you and was causing lots of people quite a lot of trouble.

We stopped for a break, but Walter decided that it would not be sensible to carry on. It was a short morning, only six runs and less than 2 hours, but the skiing was so challenging that neither of us felt cheated and we were able to get a much earlier flight to San Francisco than we originally planned.

Vertical (feet)

10470

Runs

Lift	Vertical	Intermediate Runs	Advanced Runs	Expert Runs
Great Western	1745	Elk Park	Desperado
Great Western	1745	Elk Park	Elk Park Ridge
Great Western	1745	Elk Park, Lone Star, Great Western	Wrangler, Aspen Glow
Great Western	1745	Great Western, Elk Park	Elk Park Face	Off Piste
Great Western	1745	Lone Star, Great Western	Elk Park Face	Off Piste
Great Western	1745	Lone Star, Scout	Elk Park Face	Off Piste
Total vertical	10470