Craig's Report - January 18, 2005

Deja Goo

Drip, drip, drip? "Oh, oh, that can't be good!" So it went while watching the late news last night. A rush to the porch confirmed the worst, and with rain falling while it was still -2 C, it didn't bode well for the upper mountain either. Sure enough morning revealed a sodden mess at the house and dark trees as high as we could see. On the bright side, at least my toes would finally stay warm.

It had all seemed so promising yesterday afternoon. It was snowing hard, the turns were already delightful and if vision was a bit academic, who has to see as long as it is light and soft. Folks, including me, were stoked. However these cold to warm storms have a way of ending badly and all the forecasts were calling for much warmer weather later in the week. True the only one that was calling for rain today had predicted it yesterday too, but alas it was the one that turned out to be all too accurate today.

All the avalanche areas with the exception of Cedar Ridge and Siberia Bowl, but including Siberia Ridge, were closed. The reasons were obvious and on display in a number of places. Even so it wasn't hard to get freshies if your taste in such things includes porridge. The untracked sludge wasn't all that bad, but only a couple of turns was necessary to pack this stuff into slick fast ramps that when combined with the heavy stuff gave a whole new meaning to variable. Groomed runs or runs which saw enough traffic to pack most stuff down were much more manageable, but somehow the masochist in me seemed to keep seeking out the goo. Amazingly my knees still ended up the day in approximately their original orientation.

At 15:10 it is 3C at the house and liquid powder is falling by the bucket.