So we finally got the snow… The question is if we have the stability to ride some of the bigger lines around Berthoud. We headed out today in search of an answer to that question. Over the last two weeks there have been about a dozen natural and human triggered slides around the pass reported to CAIC, and, from the appearances of it, many others that have gone unreported.

Met up with Ali at the pass at nine, the options I thought made the most sense for today were Current Creek Bench, No Name Bench, The 110”s (Middle and Lower), or Vortex. Current Creek and No Name Benches are usually comparatively safe avy wise and The 110s and Vortex are south facing and don’t have the same layer of facets as the north facing terrain does. The weather was absolutely perfect , temps in the 20′s, barely any wind, and a perfect blue sky. We decided to give Current Creek Bench a try … and off we went.

The trek up Russell was nothing less than obscenely beautiful and it wasn’t any worse on top…

Now the question was stability. We found a comparable aspect to what we were going to ski, dug a pit, and did a couple basic compression tests. The snowpack fared a lot better than I had expected. I don”t want to get too far into the details because I don’t want to give people too much of a sense of security, this layer of facets persists EVERYWHERE where the snow from October didn”t completely melt before we got into these most recent cycles. But we felt it was stable enough on this particular aspect to ski…

So ski we did …

We cruised down to the top of Hidden Knoll where we decided to give the South Chutes a shot.

They looked so tempting from the hike up, and they skied even better.

Last up we took a quick lap on the Lower 110s which were a little thin, but always fun.