It was a beautiful sunrise this morning. Thin clouds over Munchkins created a purple backdrop while the rising sun to the east turned the sky a bright a combination of yellows and oranges.
Overnight winds that gusted to100 miles per hour on Ward Peak, ended up slamming into the side of my house for a number of hours during the night. We expected a small amount of snow to drop along with the annoying high winds. A small amount of snow is what we received. My guess, looking at my deck, was that the total accumulation did not top one inch. At 8am the sky was cloudy and the air felt cold. My expectations were on the low side. My thought was that surface conditions would be firm because it was somewhat warm the day before. My ski mates were a little slow getting ready to exit the locker room because their expectations also appeared to be low. The hope was that more of the mountain had been groomed than we experienced yesterday just in case the off-piste slopes were chunky.
We hopped on to Roundhouse for our first run because Summit was on a maintenance hold. One of the grooming machines broke down in Alpine Bowl and had to be moved before the public could ride Summit Chair.
When my skis hit the snow a slow smile began to appear on my face. The surface was soft because of a thin topping of snow that had fallen overnight. It was not deeper than one or two inches, but it was enough to make the groomed run delicious. Off-Piste winds had filled in troughs between moguls to a certain extent. If you turned in the trough, then you had a nice soft feeling under your skis. If you skied over, or turned on, a mogul you experienced a more firm surface. This was true on many north facing runs, especially on the lower slopes. South facing slopes were a little more firm and held more rubble from yesterdays turns.
North facing slopes higher on the mountain were just darn good. Enough snow fell, or was blown into divots, to offer us a smooth soft surface for turning. D7, D6, D5, and little D4 were all excellent. We skied Low Beaver where the snow were just a pleasant winter pack. Exiting the bowl, and skiing down to Kangaroo was a bit of a challenge, but the groomed surface of Kangaroo was exceptional.
I was particularly happy turning on the Palisades slopes and the lower Keyhole terrain. Lower High Yellow Face and the lower portion of High Yellow Gully were perfect. We skied Art’s Knob and found more beautiful winter snow.
There were trails where I found thin breakable crust and rubble, but I put them out of my mind. We skied most our morning using the Summit Chair, but we did not hike anywhere. However, the Keyhole slopes and Lower Saddle looked awfully good. A good number of people were hiking the High Traverse and dropping over into Sun Bowl and beyond. Other people were hiking to Idiot’s Delight, High Beaver, and Estelle Bowl.
It was another good day on the slopes. This week we have had a number of excellent days of skiing.
Enjoy your day,
Andy
Also delightfully surprised at how much fun we could make today out of two inches of new snow. As we say here…you don’t know if you don’t go.
I could not have been more pleased with conditions. Even a late start didn’t matter as the temperature was stable throughout the day or at least seemed so. Just lovely!!!
did the hike over to beaver 5 times today. As long you minded your cornices it was mint