Craig's Report - February 9, 1998

Heavy Hauling

It continued to rain last night at least until we went to bed. It was still warm this morning, but the trees were white above about the top of the Deer lift.  I thought it might be rather heavy, but this was still enough to entice me out for a few quick runs this morning,  I was right, it was heavy.  Where things weren't too mogulled, it did carve pretty well, but in the bumpy sections I found myself abandoning any pretense of style to the goal of keeping the right bits in the snow.

The Bear T-Bar was closed due to some sort of malady for the brief time I was up, so the top of Boom was as high as you got without climbing.  The top part of Cedar Ridge (right) had boot to knee deep moderately heavy soft snow and essentially no tracks when I first got there.  There was a significant wind blowing from the south, so these northern slopes may have had a little extra depth from blow in.  As you descended the snow got thinner and heavier until it was pretty dense down near the bottom.

Sunnyside was also unmarked when I got to it and I assumed it was because the T-Bar was closed.  It may have been because people were smarter than me though.  The combination of heavy wet snow in the troughs and hard lumpy mogul tops was certainly enough to ensure that I didn't make a smooth effortless run down.  I exited down Dipsey which had a few centimetres of heavy crud up near the top and firm corduroy down near the bottom.

Walking back to the house I couldn't help but reflect on how much less snow there was on the house and in the yard as compared to last year.  As this picture shows, there is only about 20 centimetres or so on the roof, while last year it would have been at least chest deep.   Hmmm...

At a little after 3:00 PM it is 4C at the house under a mainly cloudy sky.