Summit Daily file
With more snowfall in the upcoming forecast, Arapahoe Basin Ski Area Chief Operating Officer Al Henceroth has updated skiers and snowboarders on where conditions on the ski area’s East Wall expert terrain currently stand.
In a post on his blog on Thursday, Henceroth described how conditions looked at the Continental Divide terrain that features powder slopes and steep, high-elevation, narrow chutes.
Henceroth said generally, A-Basin opens up its first portions of the East Wall anywhere from January into March. Last year, A-Basin opened the North Pole terrain on the East Wall in mid-January. In 1989, there was a December opening on the East Wall. On the other end, Henceroth elaborated that in other years (including the drought seasons of 2001-02 and 2011-12) the East Wall did not open at all.
As for this winter, Henceroth said A-Basin’s avalanche crew has spent “a great deal of time” working on North Pole, Willie’s Wide, the Tree Chutes and “lots of points in between” on the East Wall.
“There is a fair bit of snow on the ground,” Henceroth said in his blog post. “That ground has some very large rocks. Today we have a 45 inches (at) mid-mountain base. Typically, the East Wall opens when the base is somewhere north of 50 inches. When will it open? One storm, two storms, three storms? It is hard to say just when, but we are well on our way to getting this last big chunk of terrain open.”