The promised partly sunny day never materialized. High clouds with occasional low clouds coming through, fog layers. Probably below freezing but felt warm on backside bottom.
Some of the parking lots were approaching pretty full, big crowd for a weekday. But no liftlines except occasional on Hogsback.
Today the mission was to find the leftovers in the sidecountry, as it really hadn't snowed since Wednesday and anything obvious was well tracked out. Highlands trees pretty good. Lower part in the forest was touching down on crust but that's typical unless there's been a real big dump (which there hasn't been). Very bottom was bonchy where sunwarmed. Took one run out C-YO, snow lighter consistency there but also less of it, and a markedly harder more chattery crust than was present on the non-north aspects. Sluffed easy but harmlessly.
Grace Lakes area was good but had seen a lot more traffic than I'm used to seeing from a weekday crowd. For some reason a cat had come into the higher (swampy) Grace Lake from top of Brooks and tracked a three ring bullseye just next to where the lake is in summer. Even left a corduroyed stretch where it was steeper. And there were trees and posts with survey ribbon. Leftover party favors of some activity like the avy dog school? Or pre-surveying for the proposed lift? Mysterious.
