We had a great weekend poking around in considerable and high avalanche danger conditions.
On Saturday, we headed up to Arapahoe Lakes. When we got to East Portal, there were about 10 cars already in the parking lot at 7:30 AM...but we were the only people on the skin track, which eventually turned to no skin track and breaking trail. We slogged through hollow, sometimes above-knee deep pow pow up to treeline at Arapahoe Lakes, and skied a lap where we had seen a rather nice looking shot so we could get first tracks, worried a large crowd was right behind us. But NOBODY WAS, and after skiing a sweet, shark-free lap, we headed back up our own skin track (which still, nobody else had come up) and went a little higher to just above tree line to dig a pit. We finally saw a few folks after that, but still, very few. Great turns.
Sunday started with an extremely icy, foggy drive up the the Park and blinking red on the CAIC website for the Front Range. After skinning (very slowly, being pretty tired from the day before...early season legs, despite ATC) up to Trail Ridge Road below Main Vein, we decided to dig a pit and do some instability tests. Sudden collapse on both CT's at the top of the basal layer facets (CT20)...expected. The turns from there back down to the car were surprisingly DEEP and light. We finished the weekend by taking our skis to get tuned. Let the winter begin.
