February 24, 2002

There's Always a But

It was a beautiful sunny day with lots of boot high or even deeper powder and surprisingly light crowds, presumably courtesy of Friday's road closures and the gold medal hockey game. No wonder terms like 'excellent day' could be overheard in the locker room, but - ever notice how my reports always seem to have a but - there was a dark side and that was the ice underneath. In many place this was not particularly evident and even on steep slopes the uncut snow could keep at least the first passerby safely out of its reach. However it was quite variable and many places the wind had moved snow around so that nice deep turns might alternate with hard crunchy ones in a rather startling fashion.

Not only was it hard to visually detect what would be soft and what would be hard, I had no luck in guessing what different slopes would be like. Freeway was predictably scraped and tricky, but to my surprise the right side of Sunny Side was a delight while Gorbi and Steep and Deep unpredictably mixed soft and lovely turns with nerve wracking skitters. Bootleg Glades were reached by traversing through eerie snow drift sculptures on Trespass Trail and the glades themselves featured a wild mix of up to thigh deep delight and crunchy bumps.

The more moderate bump runs seemed to be generally soft and delightful and of course the groomed runs were as excellent as groomed can get. However with no snow and continuing cool temperatures in the forecast for the next few days, I fear that busy feet will scrape many areas down to the evil below and that the steep areas in particular may become less than a treat.

At 4:30 it is almost completely clear and -10 C at the house.