| West Mushroom: This is usually a fun bump run with a milder slope typical of the east side of the area. The West leg is accessible from the Aspen lift where as the East leg is meant for access from the Spruce lift (although also accessible from Aspen). | |
| Mal's Run: Often this run is reserved for competitive events, (race course) but was open today for all. I did find it grueling and relentless today however. | |
| Porcupine Park: One of my favorites, but then I like tree runs, even if this one has just a few trees. This run merges into "Compromise" and then dumps into your choice of one of the three fingers (only one of which was open today) | |
| Porcupine Park: Here is another (and mostly more exciting) run down through it, but this time from high above on a little run called "Oops" where I almost cut someone off cruising down "Bruce's Blvd". This time instead of doing one of the "Fingers" I cruised over to Wildcat, which was one of the best runs on the mountain that day. | |
| Wildcat: I don't think this one was from the top, and can't even remember how we got there. Great run anyway. | |
| Breathless: This run is said to be one of the hardest on the mountain do to initial steepness and tendency for very large moguls. Unfortunately the camera doesn't seem to capture the steepness as less steep runs recorded on this mountain seem more exciting because I am able to ski them faster. | |
| Nuther Mother: Like "Breathless" this run is considered one of the mountain's "Fearsome Foursome". That said it is a little less steep then Breathless. |
I might have had a little dirt (probably a fingerprint) on the tiny lens of this camera today as the videos seem a little less focused. Of course it also has a little trouble with the quickly changing lighting conditions (as any camera would) and often the white-balance gets off for awhile as well.
Still learning how to best use this amazing little camera. I also fell for the oldest failure in photography: I left the lens cap on the camera during the first run down the mountain! Oh well. This time at least I remembered my solar and battery powered USB hub that I used to keep the battery up throughout the day, however somehow I still didn't get the camera turned on about half the time so I lost at least this much other footage that I thought I was getting. Live and learn. Hopefully I'll do better next time.
| East Mushroom: This is usually a fun bump run with a milder slope typical of the east side of the area. Had to quickly look around each bump so not to hit a hiding rock! This place recently got a much needed 15" dump of snow, but not on much of a base, so skiing was a little tricky at times. | |
| Nuther Mother: The first of the "Fab 4" ("Must Do" advanced runs on the mountain). So this turned out to have the best snow on the mountain that day, it somehow was soft and preserved all through the entire day. I think the idea is that you are to mow off the sapplings trying to take over the run with your sharp edges. My edges are quite dull. One fought Kirsten off by hitting her in the back! | |
| Little Mother: So we just HAD to leave in the disapproval of the youngsters about doing a "Groomer" with all these great bump runs around! "Little Mother" is the steep top to "Big Mother", which we also did, but between me getting tired and slow half way down "Big Mother" and Kirsten giving help to someone that crashed with pieces hitting his nose, I decided to cut the video early. | |
| Mal's Run: To further rest up, we retreated to the east side of the slope to "Mals Run" (Still a black though). Had some fun down it, then detoured off into who knows where, then finally was diverted off on road back to the "Mother" lift (I cut the video at this point) | |
| West Mushroom: I guess I got my energy back. The snow was real good by this time of the day. Too bad most of the challenge on this run was trying to avoid all the rocks! I guess better luck next snow storm. Still the run was a lot of fun as always. | |
| I Don't Care: This is a nice groomed cruiser tucked away on the far west side of the ski area, past the grueling "Fab 4" or "Fearsome Foursome" We actually started out on the west end of the "Rim Run" where you can look down to an edge of the Valles Caldera. After that we turned onto "I Don't Care" then in to "Salamander Gully" on it's way back to the "Mother" lift. Although I clocked my top speed of the day here, we were actually just cruising this run to rest up after doing the "Fearsome Foursome" again. |
So this place was almost lost to financial ruin! After barely surviving the famous recent forest fire, the cooperative then ran out of money. Fortunately it was taken over by the people who run Durango Mountain Resort (DNR, formally Purgatory), and New Mexico's "Sipapu". I think they've done a great job with Sipapu, so hopefully they can do their magic with this place. Perhaps NOT hiding it from the rest of the world would be a great start! This is a great alternative to Santa Fe Ski area when it is either too crowded or too windy. Oh and they have lots of wide groomed runs too, I just have too much fun on the bumps to bother with them too much.