Craig's Report - March 22, 1998


White & Wet

Saturday morning it looked like we might have some nice spring skiing this weekend, but by noon the clouds had rolled in and it was raining down at the house.  We stayed in.

It was still raining this morning and a low cloud band made it hard to guess how high the rain was.  As this picture of my front deck suggests, it wasn't very inspiring conditions, but we decided to head up for a while anyway.

By the time we got to the lockers the rain had changed to very wet snow and we met folks saying it was great up top and nice and wintry.


mar04982.JPG (19365 bytes)In this case wintry for the Sierra Nevadas perhaps. It was very foggy at top with lots of heavy wet snow falling that seemed particularly fond of any goggle surface.

This picture does not suggest how foggy it really was and it got even foggier a little farther down.  I took a picture in the middle of Bear which shows nothing but white, which is exactly what it looked like in person.


mar22984.JPG (21648 bytes)It was a good day to stay in the trees and we had some fun runs down Cedar Ridge.  The snow was your basic slush, but it carved well and made a suitable, if soggy, replacement for powder.  I heard one passing skier call it 'fantabulous', but I have to think he was a powder deprived child or had just had a very bad fall.  :-)

Still it was surprisingly pleasant and as far as crowds went, the only problem was rousing the lifties when you got to the bottom.  Even my picky son seemed to agree that it was good fun.

When we got back to the house, the rain had definitely changed to snow, although it was still melting as soon as it hit.  At 4:30 PM it continues to snow fairly hard and the temperature is now just below zero.  It looks like it might be nice in the morning, but unfortunately I have other commitments.

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