January 15, 2012 Summit East

It was rather brisk this morning when the lifts started loading early.  The base area was in the low 20's and upper teens on the top.  Most of the slopes were perfectly groomed with 2" of new providing a fast, carvable environment.  The steep and moguled slopes had icy moguls with the 7-9" that fell in the past 24 hours.  The powder was light and it was easy to penetrate the fluff and hit the icy moguls.  While riding the front side lift near the top, I noticed a ski patroller was repositioning the boundary sticks along the steep eastern boundary and the fresh snow was sloughing easily through the trees as he traversed the slope.  After 2 plus hours of no lift lines, the crowds arrived and we departed.  It was snowing lightly during our visit and also down to aboout 1500' heading west. 

We had a similar morning and similar time of bailing a teeny bit north at Central. We stayed on lower angle stuff as it was fluffier - we have enough practice on ice from living in New England anyway. Our dog was happy about our bailing early as he was waiting in the car, so we drove over to Gold Creek to take him out for a nice 3 hour XC ski. It was pretty much standard Gold Creek circus today, to which we added our little act. Very nice to have fresh powder there; we did a few trips earlier this season where the fishscales on our XC skis made that annoying humming sound but today it was nice and quiet. Almost wished we'd skipped the multi-sport approach to the day and done a vertically oriented tour instead, but we woulda left the dog home if we had (hip/knee issues limit the sorts of ski outings we'll take him on) and it sure was fun to see how happy he was this afternoon!

(hip/knee issues limit the sorts of ski outings we'll take him on) and it sure was fun to see how happy he was this afternoon!

Jim,  Good on ya ! 

The dog's hip/knee issues, or yours? :
If the former, I can relate. If the latter, both Zap and I can relate....