December 14, 2012 Summit West

This was our second day on the lifts and we skied at Summit West.  With Summit Central opening for its first day, we found that most folks would not at West.  The temperatures were in the upper 20’s with 3” of new powder on groomed.   The snow was silky under our skis which was very nice.  We arrived at 11am so the top part of the mountain was still fogged in.  The cooler temperatures meant no grease on the rollers along the lift cable which was nice for our clothing.  We did 4 runs on the Little Thunder lift, and I finally felt that I was making some linked turns.  I was surprised when Jill started figure-eighting my turns.

I finally got the courage to ride the Pacific Crest lift.  I had the liftie explain how to ride on the loading carpet. The upper third of the slope was in the clouds, but the cover was good and there were only a few folks around.  Damn, I really had a great run!  The 3” of dry powder on the groomed run was great.  I started making some linked turns which felt really good. We made another run and my legs told me that it was time to stop. It was 6 runs in an hour and a quarter on the slopes.  We  skied twice as far as on Tuesday in less time; I like this rate of improvement!  There’s hope after all.   

Good for you Zap. Mad props to you. Keep up the good work.

Nice to read you're coming along so fast in your recovery.

Here's a morning report...

12/15/12 – 28 degrees chilly this morning at the 0830 loading of Pacific Crest at West.  The loading magic carpet is down already and the lifties didn’t know how long it’s going to take to get parts.  Top half of the hill was floggy (fog plus flat light) with 3-4 chair vis, but still quite fun and being clear lower down let us cut loose a bit.  Fresh snow was only 2-3 inches and had been pretty cut down by the last week’s traffic so no fresh turns were found.  The base was medium firm without any ice to be seen.  We played around in monster alley for a couple of runs, then headed to Wildside, over the crossover and all the way to Silver Fir for a mini grand tour.  Central’s snow seemed like it had seen more rain/solidification over the week and there were quite a few sticks still poking up out of the snow at the bottom of the Fir runs.  Lift lines were non-existent except for the Central Express where the corrals were full.  Made a run thru one of our stashes of freshies where I measured 8-9 inches of soft on the pole-push test near the top of Central.  Snowfall kicked in at 1100 as predicted and we’d had a good morning so it was back to West, a corndog and then down to rest up for tomorrow.  TomK & Kerry