{"id":2441602,"date":"2019-03-11T22:56:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T04:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/a-pass-at-the-poma\/"},"modified":"2019-03-11T22:56:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T04:56:00","slug":"a-pass-at-the-poma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/a-pass-at-the-poma\/","title":{"rendered":"A pass at the poma"},"content":{"rendered":"
The view from the Cirque on Snowmass ski resort on Sunday.<\/strong>
Anna Stonehouse\/The Aspen Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For three ski seasons now in Aspen I have avoided riding the poma up to the Cirque area on Snowmass.<\/p>\n

Why, you ask? From what I\u2019ve gathered from longer-term locals than myself is, \u201cIt\u2019s not usually worth it,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a tourist trap,\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s better terrain on the rest of the mountain\u201d or, \u201cIt\u2019s always windswept.\u201d Hearing all of these lackluster comments and watching the process of getting pulled up part of the slopes by a cable system after waiting in line for a while never appealed to me.<\/p>\n

However, Sunday in Snowmass conditions appeared to be ideal and the group who I was touring the mountain with decided to get in line and head up to the Cirque. This poma is different than the T-bars I\u2019ve ridden before; it has a circular dish you put between your legs instead of the \u201cT\u201d part that pushes your booty up the mountain. Flashbacks from being a child at a ski resort in Wisconsin where I attempted my first t-bar swept into my brain. I was about 5 years old and completely sat down on the T-bar (exact opposite of what they tell you to do) and remained hanging onto it while getting dragged up the track until enough people screamed at me, \u201cLet go!\u201d A more recent flashback was of my friend Katie in Breckenridge, on her first T-bar experience in front of me. Similar to my 5-year-old self, Katie got dragged up most of the mountain after mistakenly sitting on the t-bar and resulted in very sore biceps from the experience. I still laugh out loud thinking about it \u2014 good friend, I know.<\/p>\n

After scanning the line on Sunday I noticed there weren\u2019t very many snowboarders like myself waiting to go up. Hmm, why was that, I wondered? The few who did go up before me I studied intently to see how the process went before my turn. It appeared to go smoothly for them but my fear of humiliation for my potential failure to those in line with me continued to progress. Shout out to the guy behind me who gave me the encouraging \u201cYou got this\u201d before I went up. I was the last of my group to go up and desperately didn\u2019t want to be the one who didn\u2019t make it to the top.<\/p>\n

Whew, deep breath, it was my turn. The liftie says to me, \u201cSo, you know the drill right?\u201d \u201cNope!\u201d was my response. He gave me a quick and dirty response of how to put the poma between my legs and said, \u201cJust keep standing up.\u201d I couldn\u2019t help but laugh but hey, keep it simple right?<\/p>\n

The takeoff went pretty smooth actually and I was surprised how as a snowboarder the ride wasn\u2019t too bad minus the whiteout wind gusts from time to time. I made it to the top with hoots and hollers from my group and they told me, \u201cYou\u2019re at the highest point in Snowmass!\u201d We were all getting blasted with uncomfortable cold wind and snow in our faces so I retorted, \u201cLet\u2019s get off of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I must say, riding down the Cirque with this fresh snow we got this week was actually pretty glorious. It was creamy snow (if you know, you know) and absolutely delightful. Moral of this story is, I won\u2019t be so quick to dismiss a feature I haven\u2019t explored on the mountain next time until I can give it my own two cents!<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The view from the Cirque on Snowmass ski resort on Sunday.Anna Stonehouse\/The Aspen Times For three ski seasons now in Aspen I have avoided riding the poma up to the Cirque area on Snowmass. Why, you ask? From what I\u2019ve gathered from longer-term locals than myself is, \u201cIt\u2019s not usually worth it,\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a tourist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2441602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 05:23:48","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}