Today’s favorite run: Lodgepole

With so much to explore at Vail (195 runs to be exact!) I thought it’d be fun to periodically post what my favorite run of the day was. Today it was Lodgepole.

The weather wasn’t awesome today—a rarity—so I stuck to the front side. It was windy. Snow was nuking. Visibility wasn’t awesome so I didn’t want to hit the back bowls. I decided to explore above the Lionshead area as I’m rarely over there.

I loaded up in Lionshead on the Born Free Express then went skiers left off the lift and traversed over to Avanti Express Lift. From there I went skiiers right, like a lot of folks. However, most people were peeling off quickly onto Avanti, Pickeroon, and Berries. Lodgepole seemingly had no one headed down it. So I picked it and was pleasantly surprised.

It’s a chill blue groomer with undulating rollers…a.k.a. “just my type”. It was nice and wide allowing me to pick my line easily. There were some widespread trees around that were amusing to pick different lines through. Being a mid mountain run, it’s not particularly long so it was easy to lap it on Avanti Express again and again.

I realized there was beginner terrain further east of it so by sticking to Lodgepole (and it’s neighbor Columbine) I stayed out of the way of people learning and stayed out of the way of the speed demons on the blacks. All in all, it was just the right speed for some “meditative” runs to clear my head and then easily be able to get back down to the village before my 2 hours of free parking wore off!