January 20, 2000

Snow Drought continues through Third Day

Yes and some of the locals are starting to experience withdrawal after 72 hours with nothing more than a skiff to feed their habit. Still they are stoically skiing and boarding the packed, moguls and chopped which, while well short of powder, has stayed mercifully friendly.

The tongue and cheek title was inspired by one of my skiing companions who asked, in apparent seriousness, where I had been skiing since the drought started. In light of the major snowfall on Sunday, I took some consolation in this remark as I sometimes think I might be getting just a little too spoiled. At least I now know I have company.

I was skiing in my men's day, club today and we spent most of our time on the cruisers of the old side. These were all very nice, with edge friendly hero snow and reasonable levels of excitement provided just by trying to avoid skiing into each other. I did poach a run down the center of Easter on the last run and found it well used with moguls and chopped, but the moguls were modest and soft and the chopped was well short of crud status. It was certainly quite enjoyable.

I missed yesterday's sun and today there was a low overcast and even occasional light flurries. Still the light was adequate generally, keeping in mind I didn't get up White Out Pass, but I did find one spot in the gully on the skiers left of Freeway, where the flat white on white provided a perfect hiding ground for stealth moguls. Fortunately there were benignly shaped and amenable to Braille skiing. It was also noticeably chillier today, with temperatures in the -15 to -10 C range.

At almost 9 PM, it is now -9 C and mainly cloudy, but there is one big star filled hole. However no lunar eclipse I am afraid.