There’s an expression in this COVID ski season that “Friday is the new Saturday,” and this was the day I saw a demonstration of that. There must have been 4x as many people at Schweitzer Friday as Thursday. We arrived at 9:02AM and were relegated to the lowest parking lot, requiring a short walk uphill to the Musical Chairs lift. That lift and Great Escape had 5-7 minute lines clearing out the base early in the morning.
There were other factors contributing to the difference between Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a bit of a sneaker powder day as no overnight snow was reported but it dumped hard from 6AM to noon. Those 6 inches were reported as new snow for Friday, and Friday also had less severe fog with some sunny breaks. Friday also had a smaller burst of early morning snow, so untracked snow was slightly deeper than on Thursday.
The crowd dispersed over the expansive terrain and we never waited behind more than about 10 people after those first two lifts. Obvious lines got tracked out fast but we still got our share of powder. We started with Shoot the Moon again, this time with a view to Stella terrain below.
We then got one run in near the Cedar Park liftline, deeper but more tracked than Thursday.
The other side of the ridge was less tracked.
This was SE facing but enough snow had accumulated that we felt hardly any crunch.
Now we rode Colburn several times to ski from the top.
Liz thought the visibility up top was still marginal, so our first run was in the trees of Australia.
Our second run had some clearing so we skied from the top.
View down Colburn lift:
We skied some less tracked trees beyond Australia. Then I skied one of the Lakeside Chutes from the top and joined Liz, emerging from Whiplash here.
We took a short break at Sky House, then skied to the Village via White Lightning.
This may have been the first time the Village was visible from the top.
But by the time we rode Basin Express and Lakeview it cleared more. We skied all the way out South Ridge.
Here Liz is skiing the farthest run Ayers Alley with view of the Village and the Sunnyside runs beyond.
We found less tracked snow on our final run in one of the South Bowl Chutes. We skied to the base, then down Happy Trails to the lower parking. Just below the base we got our first view of Lake Pend Oreille.
Today we skied 17,100 vertical and about 7K of powder. We were quite tired after these two days but with the fresh snow conditions it was well worth the effort.
There were other factors contributing to the difference between Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a bit of a sneaker powder day as no overnight snow was reported but it dumped hard from 6AM to noon. Those 6 inches were reported as new snow for Friday, and Friday also had less severe fog with some sunny breaks. Friday also had a smaller burst of early morning snow, so untracked snow was slightly deeper than on Thursday.
The crowd dispersed over the expansive terrain and we never waited behind more than about 10 people after those first two lifts. Obvious lines got tracked out fast but we still got our share of powder. We started with Shoot the Moon again, this time with a view to Stella terrain below.
We then got one run in near the Cedar Park liftline, deeper but more tracked than Thursday.
The other side of the ridge was less tracked.
This was SE facing but enough snow had accumulated that we felt hardly any crunch.
Now we rode Colburn several times to ski from the top.
Liz thought the visibility up top was still marginal, so our first run was in the trees of Australia.
Our second run had some clearing so we skied from the top.
View down Colburn lift:
We skied some less tracked trees beyond Australia. Then I skied one of the Lakeside Chutes from the top and joined Liz, emerging from Whiplash here.
We took a short break at Sky House, then skied to the Village via White Lightning.
This may have been the first time the Village was visible from the top.
But by the time we rode Basin Express and Lakeview it cleared more. We skied all the way out South Ridge.
Here Liz is skiing the farthest run Ayers Alley with view of the Village and the Sunnyside runs beyond.
We found less tracked snow on our final run in one of the South Bowl Chutes. We skied to the base, then down Happy Trails to the lower parking. Just below the base we got our first view of Lake Pend Oreille.
Today we skied 17,100 vertical and about 7K of powder. We were quite tired after these two days but with the fresh snow conditions it was well worth the effort.
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