The perpetual almost spring weather continues day after day, but with a few more people after the blackout period this weekend ended. The story is the same. Every night some dedicated members of the grooming team reset the mountain the best they can with limited snow resources, and then a bunch of us come out and thrash things again.
There’s a few select runs that are getting soft each day due to an increasingly high sun angle. The bulk of the mountain is still remaining pretty firm, due to temperatures barely out of the 30’s and a chilling wind. Things softened a bit later today then when I last skied on Saturday. We tried to stay ahead of the crowds as they followed the sun, arriving at our usual destinations about 30 minutes too early. With more people on the slopes, there was not much time for snow to soften before it got scraped away.
While lift lines were generally pretty short, we were eventually driven away by crowded conditions on the runouts back to the lifts. We witnessed a few close calls today as some people just can’t seem to understand the importance of slowing down when there’s a lot of traffic coming from several different directions. About the only place you can avoid a runout is on Outer Limits and that whole run was pretty crazy at times mid-day.
Tomorrow, there should be fewer people on the hill, as not everybody has a ski week. Word on the street is that kids teams will not meet Tuesday and Wednesday this week. We imagine that some families may take a break.
Forecast temperatures are also expected to be a bit lower the next two days as well, as you can see in the headline photo. We also get a variety of wind through the week, including at least one day of an east wind. In short, conditions will not necessarily be improving during the week…thankfully the grooming has been totally on point this season.
A cutoff low could possibly move in close enough to give a quick snow shower Friday into Saturday. Cutoff lows are notoriously difficult to forecast, as they generally are not associated with a driving jet stream. Over the last four runs of the GFS, it shows the potential for possibly an inch of snow. After that, we’re into March before we seen any other sign of snow. It is what it is.