Work Wanted!!

Work Wanted!

Perhaps the weather will change toward the end of the month, but for now spring is in the air. Today was another day of sunshine and blue skies. Winds speeds were low, under 20 mph in the afternoon, and temperatures reached above 40 degrees. The grooming crew did another superb job overnight, etching their corduroy looking lines on more trails then I can count.

Summit Chair opened a few minutes before nine, giving early birds time to leave their marks on the perfectly groomed slopes before too many other people arrived to do the same. We were in line when they opened and took advantage of the extra moments to make a couple of high speed runs down Sunspot and in Alpine Bowl. I love making wide sweeping turns on fresh corduroy, but as soon as more folks show up this style of skiing becomes problematic.

In my opinion, trails became overcrowded with skiers and snowboarders shortly after nine. Grooming creates a surface that allows many skiers and snowboarders, who would normally have trouble negotiating a trail above their ability, to attempt attacking the slope. I stopped at the base of Alpine Bowl a couple of times to watch people coming down the bowl. Some were making turns at a reasonable speed, others were turning, but fighting each turn a bit, and then there were the macho groups who thought going straight down the bowl at very high speed was really cool.

Grooming creates a smooth surface that allows people to go downhill at very high speeds. In my opinion this can be just ridiculously dangerous. If you want to know how fast you can go, or you just want to experience speed, then join a race team, but do not straight-line Alpine Bowl, Wolverine, or any other trail where people with lower abilities are skiing or on a snowboarding. Myself, and other members of the group I was skiing with today, felt as if we were lucky to have avoided a collision with one of the more out-of-control people on the hill. We all came very close to being hit today. I actually quit early because it just felt a little scary on the slope.

We did enjoy making tracks on the fresh corduroy available off the Summit Chair first thing in the morning. Alpine Bowl, Sunspot, D8, Wolverine Bowl, Werner’s, Charity, Rock Garden/Dance Floor, and Ladies Slalom were pleasurable. I found Yellow Trail, a little more firm than I would have liked because the grooming was rather narrowly done and firm snow and moguls painted the side.

Sherwood was softening, but be careful. Dirt and rocks are popping up as the thin cover melts away. We did not venture out to South Face this morning, but we saw other people skiing it. When I skied it a couple of days ago, the surface was spring-like skier packed with reasonable size moguls. The trick was to ski where other people had previously skied. Beyond the skier packed South Face Slope the terrain became very rough and rather unpleasant underfoot.

New signs have been placed at the top of Sherwood in an effort to scare people away from trying the steep treed slopes of Our Father, Counterweight Gully and Sherwood Cliffs which are very firm and full of moguls. These new signs, in black and white, indicate the slopes are double diamond. They sport the image of a skull and crossbones.

On the way back to the base area we scooted down Reily’s Run and took trips down Outer Limits and Ridge Run. They were beginning to soften just before noon.

Our last gasp for the morning was a slow ride up Yellow Chair followed by an off-piste tour of Rolls and Knolls and Banana Chute. Firm, but not too icy. Small moguls are a plenty in Banana Chute.

If you are going out of bounds to do some backcountry touring, you might want to double check avalanche conditions. Since we have not had snow in awhile one might think the slide conditions are very low, but I just received a phone message that Alpine is going to do some blasting within the next two hours above the Alpine Meadows Road. Perhaps there is some danger.

This afternoon I was having a conversation with my snow blower, who has been sitting in my garage with a sad face for weeks. He indicated that he was getting very stiff and depressed, and ask me to please find him some work to do. I promised to speak to the snow gods and ask them to please send him a snow storm so he could go to work.

Tomorrow looks like a repeat of today.

Enjoy your day,

Andy