March 26, 2001

Twenty Flavours of Mush

Around ten this morning the rain that had pummeled the base area since yesterday afternoon turned to snow - wet sticky goggle blotting, drip down your neck snow, but snow nonetheless. From the extent of the water soaked slush patches on the lower runs, this happened none too soon. While the trees were green a long way up, they were sporting a bit of white at the top of Bear and there was some new slush down almost to the bottom.

Up top the visibility was often just awful and a goggle swipe was required with just about every turn. The snow in upper Lizard and Cedar was pretty heavy and apparently there weren't many idiots dumb enough to ski off trail, for I had my choice of acres of untracked in Cedar. Actually apart from the blindness issue, it was pretty nice up high. It got heavier farther down and in places on lower Cedar Ridge, one was likely to encounter snow lumps that while not frozen solid, still could give a pretty rough ride. Still the moisture and warmth had dispelled or dramatically softened the ice everywhere on the mountain though as so it was reasonable to ski almost anything.

Because visibility was so poor, I put off going over to White Out Pass until my last run and that turned out to be a mistake. The visibility, while still the pits, was actually better there, at least during my one run, and the snow was much lighter. Indeed some of my turns on the 123s were probably in the nicest powder I've had in a while, or at least it felt that way, for my eyes sure weren't providing me any information about it. In any case it soon got heavier and was pretty much slush by the time I got to the top of the gully, but that poor man's powder (slush) was still much better than ice.

It looked like it might clear off around one or so, but just before three a mixture of rain and snow (mainly rain) is again falling heavily at the house. There is no accumulation down here, but hopefully it will be building up at higher elevations. It is currently 2 C on the porch.


The top of Elk had lots of gray slushy areas.

Cedar Ridge was heavy but nice up top, however there was enough lump residue farther down to make it less than comfortable.

More gray slush, this time on Meadow just above the bottom of the Timber lift. Up around the corner, the slush almost went side to side on the Meadow flats.

In contrast it was still winter in upper Currie with real honest to goodness powder down to about where this was taken. Below was still good, as long as you don't mind the heavy stuff.