Craig's Report - November 20, 1998


Soggy Slog

What kind of moron would leave his comfortable lounger and the esoteric delights of Linux twiddling to walk up a mountain in freezing rain.  Despite the tenuous rationalization of the need for more than finger exercise, clearly it could only someone with a total neuron count in the mid teens.  Out the door I went.

My estimation of my relative mental health improved considerably when I encountered Todd and Alex skiing down Elk.  Apparently I wasn't the dumbest mammal on the hill after all. <g>

Actually only Todd chose to ski all the way down to where I took this picture at the cat track where the Elk chair crosses the run.  It certainly looked dubious, but Todd advised that his grin should say it all and that was pretty hard to argue with.

While the rain had turned to snow somewhere around the bottom of the half pipe, it was still windy and wet and thus I am afraid drops on the lens must be considered a character feature today.

Todd and Alex also reported some pretty good skiing up on Bear despite the grass sticking through.  Apparently if felt almost like a groomed run.  Yeah right I thought.

Sure enough up at the Bear's Den there was a dense base perhaps boot deep that did feel like it would cut a decent turn and still keep you up off the pointy nasties. 

 


There was still lots of stuff sticking through thin snow on Bear, but it looked much better than this picture suggests and I could easily believe the boys had some fun turns down here.   There were also a couple of girls in the Bear's Den recovering from their first ever attempt at snow boarding.  You just have to give these folks A for enthusiasm, although you might not want to examine the rest of the report card too carefully. <g>

The graininess of these pictures isn't because my camera was having a bad day, but because the conditions were approaching blizzard status.  In other words perfect weather for the upper mountain.

I walked back down Elk admiring Todd and Alex's turns.  To my amazement one of them, presumably Todd, had continued skiing down from where I had met them.  In fact he, or someone, skied all the way down to the top of the Mighty Moose.  As you can see the conditions were ankle deep grass on a half centimeter unpacked base.  Of course the pouring rain probably helped keep everything slick. <g>

At 6:00 PM it is 1 C at the house with a steady rain.
(P.S. anyone named Todd in this report is completely fictitious and should not be confused with the real Todd who seemed to be a very nice fellow with a full neuron count.   <g> In other words I hope that anyone reading this, particularly Todd, will realize that all the gibes were my attempt at good natured fun).

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