Day 24 : Last day at Snowmass

Today was our last day at Snowmass, so we made a point of doing some runs we hadn't done previously, this meant a couple of new lifts. One was the 'High Alpine' lift and a run from there, that we had planned to do yesterday afternoon before we ran out of legs. The other was the Poma lift up to the highest point on the mountain, there are many double black runs off the Poma and at the top of the run and also one nicely groomed gentle but very windy blue run back down the Cirque area. We had looked at this every day and not being a fan of Poma's (they can be hard work on the knees), I kept saying no - we don't need to do that.
Anyway sitting at lunch today, I just happened to overhear (as you do) the people at the next table talking about the view at the top, and how much it was worth doing. So this afternoon, I braved the Poma and we headed up to the top. The view from the top of both of these lifts was pretty spectacular, the photos don't do them justice.
Everyday at Snowmass they have the 'Noon Groom', this is a run that they don't open until lunchtime and if you are lucky enough to be there when it opens you get the luxury of fresh corduroy to ski on. It certainly has a different feel to the snow on runs that have had lots of skiers on them. We just happened to be lucky enough to be finishing our early lunch just near the 'Noon Groom' slope, so were almost first down the run.
We wore ourselves out again today and did a few runs that were good fun but hard work on the legs and knees. We had afternoon tea at the only eating place on the mountain that we hadn't been too before skiing from the top of Snowmass to the bottom for our final run of our six days here. We have been so lucky to have had blue skies and sunshine every day that we have been here, though so new snow would have been nice. We travel to Steamboat Springs tomorrow, our last place before we have to head home and back to reality. They are forecasting some snow on Thursday so we have our fingers crossed that there will be enough snow that we can finish our last few days with fresh snow.