Craig's Report - January 17, 1997 - 4:00 PM

It snowed lightly all morning, but had only managed about a centimeter in the driveway by the time I headed up after lunch. I expected that it would have helped a little, like the skiff we got on Wednesday, but did not have high hopes for a major change. In fact it was like a new hill. I am not talking about face shots or anything, but by the end of the afternoon there were several centimeters of new snow and most of the icy spots were covered or at least tempered a bit.

Since the Haul Back was running again, I started out by heading over to Fish Bowl which proved to be pretty delightful. This picture is taken looking back from where the traverse out joins RedTree. (It was the first point where I thought of the camera). Although Fish was well tracked, there were still lots of nice lines in boot top snow that was still pretty soft despite sitting around for a week. Of course the new on top did not hurt. Unfortunately when I went to head back to Snake, they had shut the Face Lift due to avalanche hazards.

I did take the low traverse over for some of the trees beside Snake and these were a bit lumpy, but not bad and improving rapidly. I headed out the KC chutes and to my relief these had only a few icy spots and lots of soft places to turn. Cedar Ridge was also very much improved and seemed to have much more new snow than most of the rest of the hill. There were still moguls, but they generally carve well and there were lots of soft places.

At the moment it is continuing to snow moderately at -8C, so things are looking pretty hopeful for this weekend. Tomorrow they hold the Powder Eights and there is a J race down Dancer. On Sunday they have ski demo days. I have a little more information about the new snow cat skiing and I will post it shortly.