Front Range, Colorado
April/May 1994-2003
When I worked in the ski industry, we had an annual ritual at the end of every ski season to set up camp for a week or so somewhere in the Front Range (usually Indian Peaks Wilderness Area) and do lots of backcountry skiing on the silky spring corn snow.
It was always a joke at Eldora Ski Area that the resort always closed for the season right before the biggest (and wettest) snowfall of the season. So when that happened, the first activity of the spring was to skin or snowmobile up to the top of Eldora and get fresh tracks on all of the runs.
Then Greg Mears, Josh Emdur, and I would head up to Indian Peaks Wilderness Area (another option was to venture into Rocky Mountain National Park) for a week of early season backcountry skiing in April/May. Snow still covered the entry road and the Forest Service gate was closed, so there were very few people (if any) up in the mountains. We would hike or mountain bike the 3-4 miles to the trailhead and then ski up into one of the drainages (favorites included Isabelle Lake, Blue Lake, or Crater Lake. There was absolutely no one up there (5-10 miles in at 11,000 feet), so we had the entire valley to our selves. At this time of year, warmer temperatures and sun exposure can facilitate wet avalanche cycles, so the usual plan was to get up early, climb up on the hard frozen snow, wait at the top for the sun to soften the surface and then ski the nice corn snow. We could usually get a number of runs in before the snow started to get sketchy, wet and sloppy (which made it hard to kick steps, hard to ski, and increased the avalanche danger as the snow became more unconsolidated during the day) by skiing more shaded areas ahead of the sun exposure.
Sometimes, we would also head up to the Berthoud Pass area and use the small Forest Service huts in First Creek or Second Creek and ski those drainages. I recently saw that in 2013, the Grand Huts Association replaced the tiny 40 year old A-frame hut in Second Creek, which only had room for 2-3 people, with a newer, fancier hut (the Broome Hut) that sleeps 16, and has 2 stoves, 2 sinks, and a composting toilet. They have long term plans to extend the hut system from Berthoud Pass down the Fraser Valley to Lake Granby about 50 miles north (see map below).
