Full Moon Skiing!

Join the Glade team as we skin and ski during a full moon!
Welcome to Tips Up… at night. This is something we try whenever there's a full moon and clear skies, and tonight we've got full moon, clear skies, warm weather. Full moon skinning is definitely something that occurs a fair amount in Colorado. There's a couple popular spots that will have full on bonfires, music, really just throwing a big party, which is super fun. We, right now, are taking a slightly different route, maybe lazier, and we're sticking close to home here in [inaudible 00:00:52]. I won't tell you exactly where, but I think if you look even somewhat closely, you'll probably be able to figure it out. To give you a hint, we've done a previous episode in the daytime here. But for legal reasons, probably shouldn't tell you exactly what we're doing because I'm not quite sure of the legality of this.
So since we're inside the confines of this not to be named resort that is very top secret, we do sort of have to be careful of snowcats that are grooming, because they groom at night, sleds, snowmobiles, for any maintenance guys patrol that's going up and down. So you do have to bring sort of all the regular back country equipment and then headlamp as well, just so you can A, see on the way down and B, so people can see you.
Since our last episode, which was in Steamboat, that was really sort of the start of our season in earnest in terms of snowfall. We've actually gotten a decent amount of snow since then. So we have good snow right now. I think pretty much all of the resort is actually open and we've been doing some fun skiing. So I think despite the bleak start to the year, we're actually either at average or above average for snowfall, which has been awesome. So we're very happy that we can actually get some good skiing in.
What's super cool about skiing in a full moon is that you often don't even need a headlamp. I don't know if you can see it on the camera, but really sort of feels like daylight right now, which is a really unique experience, really fun sort of novelty for us. Mix it up, do something different. So try to do it a few times a year.
When we do this, we typically try to time the moon rise because obviously, you get more light when the moon's in the sky. But as you can see behind me, it's absolutely beautiful out right now. So we started this actually a lot earlier than usual, I think, at 6:30 or 7:00. And the moon has risen right above us from the east and this mountain is facing west so we've got some pretty sweet views. It's really just kind of peaceful and quiet up here. Obviously, there's not a lot of traffic when you're skiing in the dark so it's a really good opportunity to get the whole mountain to yourself and have a good night of it.
In terms of the actual skiing, this is probably the question we get asked the most when we do this, it sort of depends on the night. A night like tonight that's completely clear, we'll probably be able of see most of what we're skiing. It does get a little weird if there's some variable snow. And this obviously hasn't been groomed so the ski down can sometimes be a little bit sketchy, especially if you've had a few adult beverages at the top, which we hear Glade Optics certainly would never condone. But generally, it's light enough to ski. And if it's, then we're pretty careful about it
Last week, a camera man was on skis for the first time, and now he's on his first skin of the year.
Now he's still on skis.
We are basically at the top right now. That was a very easy, easy pleasant skin. There are these snowboarders that are going really fast. That's the speed at which we did this whole skin actually. Grayson won't show it on camera because he can't go as fast as the rest of us. But we actually sprinted up all this. That was very pleasant. It's a super nice night out. Usually when we do these, it's freezing cold and windy and I have four layers on. But I mean, it's like 20 degrees and nice out so this was a very pleasant experience. I'm happy we did this. The snow feels not icy, which is really all you can ask for this time of night. You can see the town behind me. It's a very nice night.
We're live. Couple notes while I'm up here. We're actively looking for a beer sponsor, as well as a sled sponsor. If you know anybody, please let me know.
We are at the best part right now. We're hanging out at the top and we're getting our stuff together to go down. We actually did find that the snowcat did groom one of the trails so I think we're going to have a pretty fun run down, which will be great. But yeah, this is probably going to be a shorter episode than usual, but the purpose of the series is really to show you guys what it's like for people like us who live in ski towns, to show what our daily lives are like. So this is just a glimpse into something that we do on occasion that I think is pretty cool.

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What trail(s) did you ski down?