Craig's Report - February 19, 1997 - 4:00 PM


Timing Mistake

There were a couple of centimeters of new wet snow at the house this morning, the temperature was sitting right around the freezing point.and it couldn't make up its mind whether to snow or rain. I watched this suspiciously and sat around getting up the energy to investigate until after lunch. Big mistake! The sign at the bottom of the Quad announced 17 cm of new over night and up on the hill I found the sliced and diced remains of a new carpet of boot high. Sigh, you would think I would learn.

The snow was too heavy to call powder, but it made a very nice stand in and cut nice turns. In fact it was probably just what the doctor ordered as it was dense enough to cover most of the crunchy stuff underneath. Even where it have been packed into moguls the skiing was generally silky and quite nice. One exception was the washboard like little bumps that seemed to populate the flatter runs and the main effect of these was to discourage high speeds.

Upper Cedar and Lizard were both closed and while Snake was open, the traverse off of the Boom chair is kind of low. However even the lower slopes were decent and the KC chutes were pretty nice with only the odd scraped spot. Cedar Ridge was nice right to the bottom, with very nice smooth moguls. Sunnyside had a few icy patches, but was vastly better than yesterday and quite acceptable. Finally I was even able to get some fresh tracks over in the Windows Chutes on my way out at 3:30. That low the snow was a tad crusty somewhere underneath, but still quite pleasant.

Although it seems that it is reading week most of the prairie Universities and there is definitely more midweek traffic than there has been, there are still no lift lines to speak of. It seems to me mid February used to be busier.

It is still right about 0 C with cloudy skies with occasional snow or maybe rain showers down here at the house.

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