This video was shot skiing the back bowls at Vail Colorado on a powder day.

This is not shot by a professional crew, nor is it shot heli or cat skiing. Not a single step of hiking was undertaken. Every single turn was taken in the back bowls of Vail Resort in Colorado. No secret stashes, no hidden gems. All in plain sight of lifts and on popular ski runs. The video was shot completely with a GoPro Hero HD 3 Black. This day truly was epic!

I can very gladly report that the day this video was shot, Vail significantly UNDER reported the snowfall. In the morning, there was a few inches in town and the official report was for 4 inches in the overnight period on top of snow that fell during the day before. The first clip of this video was shot on the first run of the day in Sun Down bowl. The camera is mounted 5 inches above the helmet and as you can see, the snow constantly flies over the helmet and sometimes over the camera!

There was easily a foot and a half of snow pretty much everywhere in the back bowls and I don’t care what the resort says! Wind loading placed even more powder on the East facing slopes, though the snow was plentiful no matter where you went.

Due to the low official report, the crowds were fairly thin and not representative of the best day of the season so far.

Short to non existent lift lines led to fresh lines all day without even having to get creative with lines.

This recent storm has turned the season on its head. Last week, we would not even ski in the trees and now, not only is there adequate cover in the trees, there are deep powder stashes to be found. Put simply, this day was incredible. Even better when it was a surprise.

The forecast is for a little more snow to start February, before a week or so of dry and clear weather with temperatures nudging the freezing level. We suspect the snow should stay in pretty good shape for at least a few days, with the trees being a great place to sneak in a few powder stashes for days to come.

Next Thursday or Friday, forecasters agree that something is coming, though we will have to wait until closer to the date to see exactly what we can expect.

As we mentioned, this snow completely covers everything in the resort that was lacking last week. Vail now has a base to work with and any snow that falls on top of this will be very sweet indeed. Talk about a turn around!