Some of it has to do with the land usage agreement with the National Forest Service, who owns the land.
Mainly, however, it is the fact that the visas for much of the staff of the resort (and the other Colorado resorts) are four month student visas and their green cards expire at the end of March. For the past couple of weeks, many of the lifts have been shut down because there were no lifties to run them, not because there was not enough snow. Today (Sunday) China Bowl was closed even though it was an incredible powder field that you could see from the Teacup Express Lift on your way back from Blue Sky Basin.
Blue Sky Basin was totally schweet this morning. Montane Glade had awesome powder. I took a run through the Skree Field trees where there was lots of pow, but most of the other runs back there like Lovers Leap and The Divide were totally bumped up, so it was mogul school for me again. Don't like them but I'm trying to learn how to deal with them.
The closing day party at the top of Lifts 4, 5 and 11 was in full effect with lots of picnicing, wild and crazy costuming and heavy drinking. When Mrs. DBtv and I were heading east for Denver at 7:45 as the sun was going down, there were many people straggling down from the wildness.
Ben Harper blew it up on Saturday night at Ford Park as seven thousand crazies partied well into the night. We stopped drinking at 10 so we would be able to hit the early chairs on Sunday morning, and, as was mentioned above, we were paid back in pow by making it up to BSB before the masses of pricks with sticks got there and bumped it up.
All in all a great closing weekend, but by the time we took our last ride down Simba run to our lodging at Vail Cascade, serious thawing was in effect and as wintery as Saturday was, Sunday was fully spring.
I am worried that conditions at Breck next weekend might be too slushy to be enjoyed. We will keep our eyes on the weatherman's preditions.
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Be here now!
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Epic closing weekend at Vail
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