Mark Renson
New member
I drove up on Saturday morning due to a few Friday happy hour ales. We were concerned <BR>that the prior 2 days corn skiing might have resulted in some rock hard bumps for the <BR>day. That was not to be as bumps were firm, but very edgeable and forgiving with a nice <BR>powdery coating, especially off The Double. <BR> We had to mark off the bump course on Slalom Hill and the bumps there were perfect. <BR> Much of the first half of the day was non-descript, but good skiing. <BR> I did a stint on top of The Double when it strated to snow! When I got out, the skiing <BR>had improved with an elegant carpet of new snow coating the surface. At the end of the <BR>day, I left my skis outside next to the shack at the top of The Double and when we broke <BR>out for sweep, I was amazed to see that my skis were buried from the wind blown snow - it <BR>happens fast! <BR> I had a great sweep down Quacky III. At the bottom, I bellowed out that we would "dodge <BR>another bullet" and that we would get 5-10" of fresh powder for the next day as the snow <BR>was falling hard at the end of the day! I happily though to myself that surely, Sunday <BR>would be a great ski day !! ....... <BR> <BR>.... and so on Sunday morning, I stepped outside in full gear expecting 6-9" of fresh snow and - CLUNK! <BR> We accumulated 1-2" of slush with some overnight drizzle added to it. On top of that, when I started to shovel the boardwalk in the base area, some light rain commenced. <BR> Up on the mountain, we scrambled to close the expert terrain in order to either let it drain or it was too treacherous due to a death crust on the surface. I was assigned to ski down Moody's and found that it was Winter 2002 all over again! <BR> The drizzle persisted, yet the groomed trails skied very well with the wet granular surface. During my stint on the Double, the power went out which shut down The Double and Birdland lifts. The skies did tease us with an occasional outburst of big wet flakes, but it was light rain for the most part. <BR> I then went up The Single ...... finally, SNOW was sincerely falling starting at around Tower 10! I took a top-to-bottom Antelope-Broadway-Bunny non stop and found great cruising at the top and sticky knee wrenching stuff at the bottom with the snow line falling to the Bunny-Beaver cache. So, I spent between 3PM and 4 doing laps from the top to the Midstation. Snow fell hard and I became encrusted and looked like a glazed doughnut riding the lift. The Antelope-Catamount braids became an elegant wet snow carpet that was hardcore intermediate cruising at its best. <BR> Sweep down through Birdland was great as the snow line dropped well below the 1600 foot base elevation and the sticky snow dried out. <BR> At the end of the day, we hypothesized that the wet snow cured the death crust and that the dry snow would somehow absorb the wet sticky stuff. With snow falling at a rate of 1" per hour, we would certainly have well over a foot of new by the time the storm would end at midnight and with some leftover squalls, we would get another 3 or 4 inches leaving us with a cumulative total of 2 feet for tomorrow morning! .... yup, uh-huh, that's how the arithmetic works out! <BR> <BR>... yeah, right. But there was indeed 4-5" of fresh, indeed. This was over a death crust. As I wrote on the white board at the top of The Double, "Crust Under Dust" and "Interesting Conditions". Later, I would add to the latter blurb, "At Times, TOO Interesting". <BR> With the exception of a few crunchy spots, the entire length of Upper Panther was actually very good and I was able to make some sweet tracks. After removing a huge branch stuck to the underlying crust, I checked Periwinkle Bowl which was abominable - huge crunchy bumps with windblown powder and I was unable to visually differentiate between the two. I threw in the towel here and sideslipped down the edge - enough of that! <BR> We didn't even bother opening Lower Glade and Waterfall even though the daily report promised 100% open. <BR> Quacky headwall was rough and I found some wind blasted hardpack on Chipmunk that bore a frightful resemblance to Frozen McSludge even though it was all natural. <BR> But there were some great powder patches to be had - a half dozen great powder turns followed by a some crunchy death crust moguls. <BR> In the afternoon, I had to run the "No Stop, No Falls" contest. If you ski down a designated course top to bottom without falling, you get a pin. One 9 year old kid took a small fall in Cat Bowl before completing the course and had to be consoled by his Mom as he did not earn the Silver Pin. Umm, I don't think I wanna' run this anymore because I could not bear to watch the tears. <BR> I made some sweet tracks on upper Upper Glade before succumbing to a death crust mogul. One other patroller said that it was the trickiest skiing he had seen all year. I did snitch a woods shot and found reasonable skiing which I suspect greatly improved overnight with some additional snow. <BR> I swept Fall Line and found sweeeet fluff and found crust.
