Thursday - a wonderful ski day.
Ok, after weeks of no new snow and being dependent on a bullet proof frozen base, we finally got some new snow in the last couple of days.
This morning: A blue sky sunny morning on fresh snow. Cold, temps in the mid teens. A lot of grooming on the groomers, but there was always a little pow on the side that behaved like real nice pow. I was thinking things were about perfect, like a sunny Park City, Utah day. The snow was squeeking cold and at first I thought my skis were frozen onto the snow. But I had left a lot of wax on my skis from last night, didn't scrape. So things smoothed out as the wax buffed out.
However, as the day proceeded I became aware that there was a lot of boilerplate on the steep slopes. Iceberg surprised me in that it was pretty much a slick boilerplate experience. Snorting Elk Bowl seemed a little frozen and I got a report that Northway wasn't much fun.
All in all... I believe there was every kind of snow to be found, except slushy, if you wanted to go look for it. There was some skiable pow, hardpack groomers, boilerplate, chop and soft bumps.
Lower Bull Run was "interesting" - islands of mash potatoes on boilerplate. So I would execute a turn on a clump of snow and then drop down for an ice ride until I hit the next clump.
In the past, after a dump, a stash could be found under chair four, which doesn't operate during the week days. But they groomed it! Why, I don't know. There was some used pow on skier's left.
I was skiing some pow in the trees near upper Cmac. Found what appeared to be an canvas style zip up notebook thing like you would carry cd's in. But it was a little oversized and turned out to be a tool kit with ptex stuff in it. It was labeled, "The Boy Scout" and looked like it had a name like Derek on it. Left it hanging on the message board at the lift.
By 2:30 the overcast had taken over and the fog rolled in from South Back.
The good: New snow! Necessary for skiing. Grooming is excellent. Pow to be found in the shade, in the trees. Settled to 4-5 inches on the lower slopes. 8-10 inches on the north facing upper slopes.
The concerns: The boilerplate on the steep slopes. We need more snow, yes.
I skied my legs off - fun day!
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