Goals

I set a goal for myself today. I told my ski friends this morning that I hoped to do 29,000 vertical feet of skiing today. That number would bring my “official” season total on the Palisades app Leaderboard to over 2 million vertical feet this season. Based on conditions the last two days, that seemed unlikely, having hit only 15k to 18k the last two days before things got really sloggy. But at 1:11pm, I stepped onto the the Sun Deck, clocking in at 30,085 vertical feet for the day.

My achievement was not the important part here, not by a long shot. The important part is that the skiing is getting better, allowing for skiing most of the day, instead of just a couple of hours in the morning. While the air temperatures really didn’t get down to freezing overnight, the snow surface itself did freeze in most places. That allowed the corn development to proceed one more step in the right direction. But things warmed up rather quickly today, and because of that much of the off piste snow got pretty rotten, not having been consolidated by large amounts of ski traffic or heavy snow cats. Consequently, almost all of the the best skiing and riding today was on groomed terrain.

Skiing 29k vertical feet requires about 18 or 19 laps on the Summit lift, which is entirely doable, especially when conditions are good. With no lift lines and winter snow, you can probably do about 3o laps or so in a full day of skiing. That was my initial plan for today, just hot lapping Summit. With Sunspot, D8, Wolverine, Alpine Bowl and Terry’s return groomed, there was some good variety to choose from. But I got sidetracked by the third lap, drawn to High Traverse, after hearing positive reports yesterday. Fortunately, I took the smart line, following the shaded side of the ridge that separates South Face from CB Chute. That line offered smooth corn with no stickiness until I reached the return groomer. Friends that traversed farther south into Sun Bowl found it to be more of a hot mess.

Since Sherwood only offers about 950 feet of vertical per lap, I headed back to Summit. By the ninth lap, much of Summit was also a hot mess, with the exception of D8. But once you got down to the top of the Face, it was a slog to get back to the chair. We took a brief break and had a quick Clif bar, having bought out much of Melanie’s stock at the end of her season. After that, it was off to TLC to keep an eye on Scott, which opened on our second lap of TLC.

As it turns out, just about all of the best skiing today was to be found on Scott, and you get about 1100 feet of vertical on each run. Both Bobby’s and Ridge Run held up very well today, relative to the last two days. On my 12th lap at Scott, I was still finding a line pretty much all of the way back to the chair with minimal stickiness. I was on a mission to get to 29k today, so I never dropped in to Scott Chute. I should have, as it actually looked very good. I noted several groups of people making repeated laps down the chute, at least until about 12:45, and then the mountain started to feel deserted. Hot laps on Scott for the win today.

Just stating facts, the snow is melting quickly at the top of Scott chair. Just yesterday, I noticed that the grooming team had pushed a bunch of snow down the path to the Patrol shack, and around the roundabout around the shack, which is my preferred route to Bobby’s and Ridge Run. Today that was almost completely burnt out again. The other shortcuts are also burning out, and Summer Road is rapidly narrowing. The actual runs themselves are still in good shape. But Scott will not last forever.

Tomorrow’s weather is supposed to be fairly close to what we saw today, except with a bit of an east wind, which theoretically will keep the snow chilled. That get’s me to be thinking about a goal of skiing bell to bell for tomorrow. Sunday still has a chance for some afternoon thundershowers, due to a monsoonal surge of moisture pushing up from the Four Corners area. So that could affect ski operations if there is lightning.

In the extended range, I keep seeing model runs that suggest a return to a wetter pattern toward the end of the month. That’s still out in the Fantasyland part of the forecast, so it is not a certainty. I’m rooting for continued sunshine.