The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“That was the best run of my life!”
It’s going off here in the Elk Mountains if you haven’t noticed, and Saturday morning we woke up to about 10 inches of 4 percent density fluff, like that white stuff you blow off a dead dandelion stem. Blower. What a day for some in-depth research on CS Irwin’s snowcat operation, which opened on December 15 and is in its first full year of operations. As they say, timing is everything.
In Colorado, we’re experiencing the sweet, juicy rewards of what Colorado powder forecaster Joel Gratz calls the Pineapple Express. Gratz says the counter-clockwise rotation around this storm is pulling moisture straight from Hawaii and dumping it into Colorado in the form of snow. Lots of it—just look out the window.
As I drove into town early Saturday morning to meet the cat, crystalline waves of powder cascaded over the hood, up the windshield and smoked off the back of the car in long contrails. The plows were just hitting the main roads, and on the side streets the fluff was bumper deep. We met at CS Irwin’s office, where they have a fleet of Irwin-specific Wagner Custom Skis and Winterstick snowboards. Everyone got his or her gear dialed and piled into the custom Tucker Snowcat for the 11-mile ride to Irwin.
Ours was a killer crew hell-bent on a day filled with stoke—Crested Butte locals Cole and Lynelle Stanford, Erin Dicke and Carol Smith; visitors from San Francisco John Bickford and Allen Romero; Wes, Mike, and the guides. Once we arrived at the Movie Cabin, Billy Rankin gave us a safety debriefing, supplied everyone with avalanche transceivers, and we piled into the Prinoth, our powder limo for the day.
First run. One-by-one we drop in and disappear into a cloud of cold smoke. It doesn’t matter who goes first, there’s plenty of over-the-shoulder blower for everyone. Run after run, each one is better than the last. Cole exclaims, “That was the best run of my life!” more than once. He’s not alone—we’re all bubbling over with powder fever.
I’d be hard-pressed to dream up a better day. Fresh runs served a la carte until the light fades; fun folks ready to hammer until their legs can take no more. Every run was in the running for “best run of the day” and the guides put us on great snow every time we stepped out of the cat. Not that hard given the conditions, but still… it was all-time good.
Thanks Alan Bernholtz, Billy Rankin, Robin Buza, Karina Steele, Tim Covington, and Chris Benson of CS Irwin for a sick day. We’re fortunate to have the best cat skiing op in the lower 48 right in our backyard, and for them, this is only year one. The future is bright, with more than 200 inches to date this season, and more on the way. But the present ain’t so bad, either.
