Ski day 36: Kind of a joke

Vert: 8,105 m;   YTD cum vert: 302,965 m
Runs: 12;   YTD cum runs: 574


After the week of powder, today was kind of a joke. It's been busy all week, but today all the parking lots were full. Reports of powder brings out the crowds, but they were a day late. There was only about 8 cm overnight, and I had trouble finding even that generally. No, all the fresh lines are gone. On top of this, the warm I wrote about yesterday did a number on the hill. There's a line that crosses  the hil at about the top of Rolling Thunder that demarcates the good snow from the stuff that froze overnight into a rutted mess. So for instance, while the top of Goat's Head Soup looked nice...

...and looking down looked good...

...about 2/3rds the way down the slope (where the trees start to get tight, coincidentally) it turned from cut up powder to icy, crusty, rutted moguls. Not fun. Part of the problem was that even where I was standing lacked much new snow. Compare this shot of my pole to yesterday's:

And I had to whack it to get it in that far.


So while there was some nice untracked powder around up high (if you know where to look), it was generally a high speed cruising day, but the viz didn't really even support that.

Flat light at the top of Scapegoat/Rolling Thunder

By 11 AM, it fogged up and started snowing. Very hard, at times, too.

Serious snow on Goat's Eye chair

Based on the forecast, I'm pretty sure it's not going to stop snowing until Sunday. Here's hoping it gets colder, too. Because up high, the flakes were big, fat, fluffy and light. Down low (like, say, halfway down the Silver Scapegoat pitch) they became big, fat, wet, sticky flakes. Down lower (like, say, the ski out near B-Line), they became little wet, sticky flakes necessitating windshield wipers on your goggles. Everything well tracked just above the Goat's Eye base is becoming hardpacked, rutted and icy in spots.