Craig's Report - January 5, 1998

Powder Revival

What a difference a weekend can make.  It snowed on and off throughout the weekend and then started to get serious yesterday afternoon.  Although the snow tapered off overnight, it started snowing hard again this morning.  Gone were last weeks dismal conditions to be replaced with nice luscious powder.  Everything but the Face Lift was open this morning and the snow was nice and silky knee deep stuff with the odd face shot thrown in.  I discovered the hard way that it was deep enough to hide a ski after a crash. The cowardly thing eventually turned up, but I only had a little time available for skiing this morning and an exhausting half hour search was not how I wanted to spend it.  On went the powder cords.

Everything was very good and while you could still feel the crunchies underneath in some places, there were lots of other spots that were just smooth and sweet.  Lower Northridge and Wallaby soon got scraped off revealing some of last weeks treachery, but at least while I was there they were still fine to ski.

Even the ravaged lower slopes were just fine thank you.  Here is a shot of Dipsey taken near where I took last weeks picture and the twigs and brown stuff have been replaced with a nice fluff layer on top of what felt to be a friendly base.

I left well before noon and it continued to snow most of the day and the forecast is for periods of snow for both tonight and tomorrow.  That term usually translates into very nice accumulations up on the mountain.  The temperature is a warmish -3 C as I write this just before 6:00 PM, but if the forecast is to be believed it should stay below freezing for the next couple of days at least.  This promises to be tasty indeed.