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After a quick run on the Silverlode chair which serves the bottom portion (elevations 3788 to 4288 feet) of Granite Mountain, we boarded the Motherlode chair lift to get us to the top of the mountain.  This is the view off to the right about midway up the Motherlode lift.  One thing that struck us was the presence of these incredibly skinny evergreens all over the mountain (look at them in the picture).  They made up probably 95% or more of the trees on the mountain.  My best guess is that the trees are Engelmann Spruce, but if anybody has more accurate information on exactly what species they are, let me know.  These trees are one of the things that makes the tree skiing at Red so nice.  Because the branches of the trees do not extend out too far, it creates larger spaces between the trees, and thus more lines for skiing.  The lines (cables) that you see extending through the picture seem to be power / communications lines used to service the Granite Mountain summit.  In addition, there are some old lift cables from the previous lift.  Now the Motherlode triple chair lift (from which this picture is taken) services the upper mountain.  The trail directly below the lift is called Centre Star (foreground of the picture), and the clearing that you see just past the center trees is the next trail over called Granite Towers.  The trails are both single black at this point, but they are VERY steep up near the top (groomed though in parts), and they are non-stop fall line all the way down.  The pitch really is relentless for basically 2400 vertical feet.  If the snow is tough and heavy, and you are in the ungroomed sections (a majority of the lift line) you will feel the run.  Unfortunately it is directly behind you in this picture, but on the other side of the lift is a long ridge (paralleling the lift).  Looking in that direction you can see that many short steep shots drop down onto the Centre Star trail.  The slope off the ridge down to Centre Star has a vertical drop of maybe 100-150 feet, but the pitch is very steep.  It's easily 40 or 50 degrees in areas, and at times it is just composed of cliffs up to 20 feet in height.  The thing that astounded me was that the entire steep slope was covered with tight trees, yet people skied it.  These trees had spacing from about 1 to 4 feet between them.  I knew that the skiers here meant business when I saw tracks skirting between 1 foot gaps, and then dropping these cliffs.  Honestly, I had to turn around to James on the chair behind me and look at him with my mouth open!  I was excited, but I had to restrain my enthusiasm.  E was anxious about her first day at Red, and my pointing out crazy lines through steep tight trees was not going to ease her anxiety at all.  So I made a mental note, and stared at the amazing terrain in silence.  There's nothing like the first time up the lift at a new ski area.  Everything is new and exciting, and your head is trying to figure out where you're going to go.  The foot of fresh snow that they had received the day before was of course adding to the butterflies in the stomach.
This image was taken from the same position as the one above, except now you are looking forward up the mountain.  You can see that the light snow and fog made things invisible after a few hundred yards, but this picture still does a nice job of showing the broad open slope of Centre Star.  Although I couldn't find a good picture of the steep tight lines that I spoke of in the previous caption (off to the left of the lift as you look up), this image at least shows the bottom of that ridge, and shows how dense the trees are.  Take a look at the upper left portion of this picture and you can see the tight trees.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our first run off Granite was right down Centre Star.  Parts of the upper section were groomed, but as we neared the bottom it was just a huge steep field of moguls and the snow began to get heavier.  It was certainly not our prettiest of runs.  I have E on video proclaiming, "I am TOTALLY wiped out!", after just our first run off Granite.  Fortunately, it was just cold legs on our first major run.  If you look closely at the picture, you will see a small dark spec off in the distance (skier's left near the upper section of the visible trail).  That's Dave working his way down through the moguls and feeling spent.  Fortunately everybody got warmed up after that run and got their groove going.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Well, we eventually got to other areas of the mountain, and since it was a cloudy day, I don't think I have a shot of the summit area on day 1 (however, you will get to see it in pictures from subsequent days).  Greg brought us over to the Paradise area, which is the unlabeled network of trails that you see in the upper left portion of the map.  To return to the main Granite area, you take a traverse (traversing can be a big part of getting around of course, and with only two lifts servicing 360 degrees of skiing, you can traverse quite a bit if you want to switch lifts).  The traverse you see highlighted is called Southside Road (we got to know it well).  There were a number of nice jumps off to the skier's left of Southside road (as the diversion is with many traversing trails) and we found a particularly fun one.  Chris and E set up the camera, and the rest of us (Dave, James, Greg and J.Spin) came barreling down the trail individually and hit the jump.  The Talkabout radios came in particularly handy to let us know when the coast was clear to launch since we had to start probably 100 yards away and well out of sight to get enough speed.  This picture (sorry it's kind of poor - cloudy day) is of J.Spin off the aforementioned jump.  Dave had a particularly amusing crash off this one as well.  I distinctly recall Greg questioning him, "Weren't you a gymnast?".  Our trip was off to a fun start.
 
 
 
 
 
 

I'm sorry there aren't more pictures from day 1 at Red, but it's tough to stop and take pictures, especially with the excitement of the first day of skiing and low visibility conditions.  Trust me though, you WILL get to see A LOT more of Red; four more days are yet to come.  Until then...