Fleeing the weather

First for those of you going skiing or snowboarding instead of X Gaming today:

The snowboarding on Aspen Mountain was phenomenal Sunday, reported one On the Hill correspondent, especially on the backside of Bell Mountain.

“It was pretty crazy,” he reported. “It felt like there were two fronts coming in ” it was blowing all over the place.”

While the windy weather might have made it feel as if there were at least 6 inches of fresh powder anywhere you went, there was a less desirable effect near the end of the day in Copper Bowl.

“All the tourists were jampacked in Copper, trying to flee the mountain,” On the Hill’s correspondent discovered as he came off Bell Mountain. But hey, at least there were some tourists up there in the first place.

Speaking of conditions, here are the stale numbers from 5 a.m. Sunday, when the Aspen Skiing Co. was reporting zero inches of new snow. Snowmass had 55 inches on top, Aspen Highlands had 54 (but I bet it’s more in the Bowl), Aspen Mountain had 41 and Buttermilk 34.

If Ajax got 6 inches during the day yesterday and picked up more overnight, then the interesting base/new snow totals will come in tomorrow’s column. Stay tuned.

And now two notes for those who chose the X Games over the snowboard slopes.

One: Brian “Deathwish” Deegan is in Aspen Valley Hospital with a broken femur, a messed-up pelvis and other assorted injuries after ditching his motorcycle midair in the Moto X best trick qualifying round on Saturday.

He apparently decided midtrick that there wasn’t enough twist in his back flip twist and that he’d better get out from under his bike. He fell about 45 feet before piling on to the icy, rock-hard ramp.

And finally a note to the TV geniuses at ESPN: We need more TV. Namely, a MonsterTron located in front of the grandstand. The way things stand now, the only thing to watch from the grandstand is the halfpipe competition. Halfpipe’s cool, but so is skiercross, boardercross and slopestyle.

I want my X TV!