4.16.2011: An interesting day: Berthoud and Jones Pass

For weeks now I have wanted to ski the Hidden Knob at Berthoud. The Hidden Knob represents the region directly east of the Hidden Knoll and is a small very steep, lightly treed east facing slope. Upon arrival at Berthoud we discovered significantly less new snow than we had seen at Loveland, which was clearly at least partly due to major consolidation due to the warm spring weather. Upon arriving at the Knob we found a very hard bed surface without about 9 inches of heavy storm snow on top of it. A preliminary ski cut across the top of the slope produced no results. Aware that the storm snow would probably go Matt then skied a diagonal line down releasing most of the storm snow below him. Grete followed and the storm snow released about 15 feet above her, on such a steep (55 degrees) and slippery bed it was virtually impossible for Grete to ski out the slide, but she did a great job fighting to quickly move diagonally and stop herself against a tree. After this we quickly lost our appetite for the area and moved on to sled tandem practice/skiing on Jones pass.

Matt Teuling

Every day on my sled I feel more comfortable although I still have a long ways to go. We are developing better tandem techniques that I am really excited about, I'm getting better at not getting stuck, and getting better at getting unstuck! Eventually I managed to get Fabio really really stuck and was absolutely failing at getting unstuck. Fortunately a really friendly group of slednecks showed up and quickly got my sled out. We then watched them hit a road gap jump they built for a while. One thing that I have noticed and really appreciated about sledders that they are WAY more friendly and helpful than skiers ever are. Skiers almost always have a snobby mentality that not only frowns on beginners, but really straight up hates on them. It is so awesome and inspiring to see a group of people who are willing to share knowledge and instantly willing to struggle with you to move your sled!

After watching the slednecks for a while we got a bit cocky, forgot how much of gapers we are and decided we could make it up the hill below. Needless to say we were wrong, somehow we managed to turn the sled around, not fall off completely, drag ourselves back on, and make it down the hill alive.

O boy today was a show!!!