Pulled up to MRG on Wednesday morning just before 9am and was only the fifth car in the lot. Was a great relaxed day on the mountain -- midweek skiing is awesome. Was the kind of day where you could ski chute and look over your line on the way back up because nobody else had skied it. There was about 3-4" of very heavy snow on the ground from monday and tuesday's weather. That stuck to the hard stuff underneath pretty well and made the conditions pretty reasonable. Things are definitely very thin out there though. It was a few inches of heavy snow on top of a thin layer of ice and a thick layer of rock. A fair bit of open water towards the bottom of the mountain also.
Started out the day on the open trails -- cat bowl was predictably rocky up top and OK below, then lower antelope which was quite nice except for some waterbars towards the bottom. Skied the double a bit which was also reasonable -- quacky and the like were pretty good. As things got skied more, though, it got to be pretty rocky/icy on trail though.
After that, we began to hit the woods, which were for the most part better than the open trails. Lots of untracked lines through the very heavy 3-4" of fresh snow. The upper mountain stuff was mostly pretty good, especially where you could find lower-angle woods which had held the snow a bit better. Steeper stuff was more sketchy. The best runs of the day were had in woods that drop from lower antelope to beaver and over in various places off the double. We hoped that new frontier and others of the lower-mountain birch glades would be nice, but cover was really just too thin. New frontier, for example, was skiable (barely) if you're a bit of a nut, but there's a lot of open water down there. All of the usual great lines in gullies and streambeds on the lower mountain were unskiable because there's still running water there. I made the mistake of hopping into a usually great little line just above the base of the birdland chair...a few great turns, then around the edge of the rock face and oops...picking your way down 4" of snow on top of bare rock, with running water in the streambed which had to be crossed a couple times.
Finished up with a couple of runs down lynx+beaver which were pretty nice with piles of soft snow masking the ice+rock in between. A great day of skiing, but they really need some cold and some more snow up there.
Just a one picture from the day of me skiing some low-angle trees somwhere:
Started out the day on the open trails -- cat bowl was predictably rocky up top and OK below, then lower antelope which was quite nice except for some waterbars towards the bottom. Skied the double a bit which was also reasonable -- quacky and the like were pretty good. As things got skied more, though, it got to be pretty rocky/icy on trail though.
After that, we began to hit the woods, which were for the most part better than the open trails. Lots of untracked lines through the very heavy 3-4" of fresh snow. The upper mountain stuff was mostly pretty good, especially where you could find lower-angle woods which had held the snow a bit better. Steeper stuff was more sketchy. The best runs of the day were had in woods that drop from lower antelope to beaver and over in various places off the double. We hoped that new frontier and others of the lower-mountain birch glades would be nice, but cover was really just too thin. New frontier, for example, was skiable (barely) if you're a bit of a nut, but there's a lot of open water down there. All of the usual great lines in gullies and streambeds on the lower mountain were unskiable because there's still running water there. I made the mistake of hopping into a usually great little line just above the base of the birdland chair...a few great turns, then around the edge of the rock face and oops...picking your way down 4" of snow on top of bare rock, with running water in the streambed which had to be crossed a couple times.
Finished up with a couple of runs down lynx+beaver which were pretty nice with piles of soft snow masking the ice+rock in between. A great day of skiing, but they really need some cold and some more snow up there.
Just a one picture from the day of me skiing some low-angle trees somwhere: