It is as if somebody threw a switch late last week turning on spring mode. It has been warm, sunny and my driveway is trying to emerge from its ice cocoon. Now spring skiing is not my favorite and in particular morning spring skiing leaves a lot to be desired, but I had not been out in a couple of days and an afternoon commitment left me no other choice than to give it a try.
It was a cloudy morning and my choice of the South facing Concussion Chutes for my first was less than inspired. It turned out to be perfectly skiable, but the noise and vibration level was definitely too much for the Morris morning mind. About the only good result of the absence of new snow for the last few days has been to let the grooming catch up for once, even in Currie. This meant I could drift out to the center of the bowl and take the high speed carpet down.
With the sun still not out it appeared I would be stuck on the run for the
day. To make the best of this I decided I might as well at least give one of
my favorite cruisers a try. Blueberry had been freshly groomed and the swooping
and soaring sensation of its various rolls were as sweet as ever. Still the
main problem with a run like this is that 2000+ vertical feet of hard earned
butt time on a lift just seems to evaporate in seconds.
It finally occurred to me that the North facing slopes might be pretty good and sure enough Cedar Ridge was decent. We aren't talking powder or anything special here, but the moguls were fairly soft and grippy and even reasonably shaped.
By the time I left the sun had been out in force for about an hour and a final
run down Sunnyside showed the South facing slopes were coming along nicely.
The bumps were still firm, but the surface layer was getting soft enough to
allow for easy edging. This was just before noon and I suspect that in another
run or two it would have been spring supreme.
At 3:30 P.M. it is 4 C at the house and clouding over.
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