December 06, 2002

Pretty Sad

We got a little bit of precipitation last night. Too bad it was in the form of freezing rain. :-( There wasn't much of it down here at the base so it didn't cause a problem, but up around the Bear's Den it has made things pretty slick in places and the snow even more bulletproof than it already was. This made just walking interesting and indeed Cedar Trail now has a couple of black diamond bits for pedestrians. The only other recent precipitation was the weird frost/snow that condensed on everything last weekend. This has left the bottom of the hill sort of white, but there is no real substance to it and well before you get to the top of Deer you are walking on bare ground. Hardly great for the originally scheduled opening day.

The weather forecast isn't very encouraging either and while they are predicting the possibility of flurries by Tuesday, it isn't looking good for a next Friday opening. I imagine the hill will now go into day by day mode with the opening coming as soon as they can after enough snow finally falls. On the plus side, I don't think the hill has ever missed a Christmas and things were this bad in 1997 and the skiing was still okay over the holidays and very good in early January. Still it is hard not to be nervous.

At 18:15 it is -3 C and the sky is devoid of stars.



This image of upper Meadow and the bottom of Currie bowl pretty well tells the whole sorry story.

The snow guns have at least made the bunny run look winter like...

but it is a big mountain as these two lonely warriors at the half pipe suggest.

Freeway is on the left and the very bare China wall is straight ahead in this shot taken from an icy Deer Trail.

Yet another picture of the sculpting on Bear, included only because I have learned that this is to be the site of the moguls event of the freestyle world cup.

A pretty pathetic Boomerang. What snow there is you could use for masonry.

Cedar Bowl looks sort of white, but there isn't much there.

North Ridge looked relatively good and the upper part had even been catted. Still not ready for prime time though.

The lower part of Kodiak heading down to the boom chair will need a lot more snow before you would even want to toboggan it. :-(