March 11, 2002

Those words pretty much sum up the skiing experience today. Uncut bits were often easily over your knees, but it would be a real stretch to call the stuff powder. Indeed while waiting for my wife I came up with a snow quality test that involves pulling your pole out of the deep snow, turning it upside down and observing if the snow on the top of your basket falls off. If it doesn't, it can't be powder and today every flake stayed in place every time. :-)

Despite its heft, I found the snow to be fairly appealing, but I think that may have been a minority opinion and I doubt any visitor not well experienced with deep snow would have had much fun. My complaint was that the fast falling heavy wet snow had a distinct affinity for my goggle lens and as a result I found visibility to often next to nil.

The lower runs became stickier and stickier as time went on and one couldn't help feeling like a sixteen year old trying to learn to drive a standard as you lurched your toward the lift. By the time we left it was raining below the bottom of the Bear Chair and surprisingly the snow on the groomers was much more pleasant down in this rain zone.

Currie, Lizard and Cedar, except for Cedar Ridge were all closed and in the early afternoon even Sunny Side closed. On the plus side, there weren't many folks around to ski what was open.

At 16:00 it is 1 C and raining at the house