April 01, 2002

Craig's FAR Update 2002/4/1: Shake, Rattle and Roll

Yesterday was a delightful spring day with lovely snow almost everywhere.

Today wasn't!

It turned frosty overnight and the reported 7 cm of new snow just wasn't close to making the frozen debris of yesterday's warmth skier friendly. In addition a chill wind bit at any exposed flesh as you rattled over the unforgiving surface. Even groomed runs like Bear were hard and surly, although at least they didn't tend to have frozen lumps and the hot spring sun did eventually soften the lower slopes. A couple of slopes (Lizard and lower North Ridge) showed signs of the groomers failing struggle with fast falling temperatures, in the form of frozen cat scat.

You could have made fresh tracks all day on Snake Ridge and in fact I could not discern a single new cut in the snow on Steep and Deep. However as my son pointed out, that did suggest the foolish few who made the journey weren't into repeat performances. I was tempted though, so it was probably fortunate that my wife and son seem to have a larger share of the family's store of sanity. After they decided to call it quits though, I did try one final run up off of White Pass and discovered, to my relief, that 1,2,3 not only wasn't life threatening, but had some pretty decent boot high powder turns. These did seem to alternate with harder stuff, but even that was relatively free of those dreaded death cookies.

The lower portion of Currie, including the gully that was such a delight yesterday, was raspy and clattery though. All in all it would have been a better day to take up something like knitting.

At 16:00 it has managed to creep up to -2 C at the house, although there is a fair amount of melting going on thanks to that sun.