Craig's Report - January 10, 2007Ever ChangingLast weekend the hill was a powder paradise. Monday had mainly packed, but still delightful snow. Tuesday it rained at the bottom and heavy snow ruled, but surprisingly I found the actually skiing kind of pleasant, although the same could not be said for the soggy chair lift rides. Last night it was still warm and mainly raining at the house, but by morning all had frozen. Every day, a new adventure. While many of the lower runs were certainly icy, it was the wind that was once again the dominant factor in today�s conditions. A thick wind slab was common on the upper mountain and this could vary from really rather nice to rather challenging. In many places the continual wind surfacing meant fresh tracks every run and while real powder was the exception on my runs, a dense but enjoyable wind sift was prominent on most of them. Even on the lower runs the wind determined, in a pretty unpredictable way, what was good and what was not. Where it decided to make some deposits, silky smooth cruising was possible, but other places were scoured down to frozen corduroy. Most were somewhere in between with a mix of ice and soft and generally skiing on the lower mountain was just a tolerable way to get to the next lift. While it wasn�t particularly cold in terms of temperature, the wind put a definite bite in things. With temperatures scheduled to fall considerably for tomorrow and the wind to persist, it may well be below the tolerance of fair weather feet like mine. On the plus side, a bit more snow is predicted for tonight. At 15:45 it is -4 C at the house and overcast.
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