Backcountry skiing Banana Bowl in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
After taking a few weeks to rest my sprained ankle, we were headed to Estes Park for a wedding in mid May. The wedding wasn’t until late afternoon so we had most of the day to go on an adventure. As Mother Nature would have it, the forecast was for Rocky Mountain National Park to get over a foot of snow the night before the wedding. With that kind of forecast, we had no choice but to pack our skis. :)
We headed out early the next morning to do some laps in the Banana Bowl from the Bear Lake trailhead in RMNP. At 6:30am, we were the third car in the parking lot, where one of our friends was already waiting for us. We set out on the trail and decided we would take Flattop Mountain Trail up and then cut over to the bowls. As we went up in elevation, the new snow kept getting deeper and deeper. Thankfully, there was one group of people in front of us that was breaking trail so we didn’t have to. As we approached the top of the bowl, I think there was somewhere between 18-24” of fresh snow. The group in front of us kept going up above where we wanted to ski so we actually got the very first tracks down the bowl. We were a little worried about coverage and if there were any sharks lurking below the new snow, but after a few turns those fears went away, and I skied one of the best backcountry runs of my life. The snow was SO GOOD.
When we made it to the bottom there wasn’t any discussion about if we’d do another lap. We all immediately started to transition back to our skins and headed back up the bowl. At this point there were a few others also around, but we had no issue still finding some fresh tracks again. Smiles were once again from ear to ear at the bottom. Unfortunately, at this point there wasn’t time to head back up for another lap as we had a wedding to attend! I won’t forget about this day anytime soon.
