February 27, 2000

Dummies on Skis

Yes, today was the day of the dummy downhill, which in the new scheme of things has been renamed the 'Westjet' Dummy Downhill (that plug ought to be good for a one way coach ticket to Ft. McMurray <g>). About thirty contraptions of all kinds took their turn trying to hurtle down the half pipe and over a large jump to their destruction. It was snowing hard today and the while the sticky new stuff was definitely good for the slopes, it wasn't ideal for the dummies or picture taking. Many of the poor critters failed to get sufficient velocity for a truly spectacular crash and burn, but there were definitely a few that did.

Despite the continuing snow, they managed to keep everything except the Face Lift and the Cedar High traverse open. Up top the snow was very nice and approached boot high powder in places that hadn't been thrashed by the crowds. Like yesterday, we did not run into any large line ups and again it did not seem as busy to me as it was on Friday. Still there were lots of skis and boards working hard and successfully to turn any new stuff into moguls.

Down below the old rain line, the new snow certainly helped, but tended to get scrapped into soft lumps separated by hard slick patches. On a morning trip down Sky Dive I found large moguls, but quite a bit of soft snow, particularly up top. On the lower part though, frozen lumps and bumps underneath made things rather unpleasant.

At 6:20 the porch thermometer is claiming -1 C and it continues to snow.