So what's it doing up there?

A fully thorough mix of everything has fallen, but mostly frozen, including honest to goodness snow. In fact, it's dumping again right now. Great turns too. Lots of people seem to have thought better of coming up, because the freshies have been ... extensive.

Just got done with my favorite LP off-piste run, and had it all to myself at 11am. No feeding frenzy = more powder for anyone with the gumption to come!

John

p.s. Did I just use "gumption" in a sentence? Pardon my flagrant folkism.

It's a type of snow I haven't seen a lot before: wettish soft granular. It's not powder, but it is positively fantastic. Freshies galore. Moguls are really filled in. Real glad I went up.

HowieT2 wrote:

So what's it doing up there?

Dumping

Mad Cam indicates that frozen precip is coming down harder than I've seen in some time.

Fun day at ME. "beach sand powder" . All trails skiing great. Top of the diamond had a crust for the first 200ft,then much better the rest of the way down. You know the base is getting deep when the Bravo head wall gets filled in . A "cream puff --goggle wipe kind of day. JC

Got over to the mountain a little disappointed. I was planning on skiing in the 6-8" the "forecasters" had promised us, and there seemed to be around an inch. The snowstorm I was planning on skiing in was mostly sleet.

Still, the sleet was not really getting me wet, and it skied very well. Many remarked about the creamy feel. Eden skied quite well, as did a few other woods sections I tried, although the sleet made some of the snow a little heavy.

Speaking of heavy, it was probably close to 10:30 when the switch came in and we started to get a heavy snow. It quickly built up. Around 12:30 I made the mistake of going in for something to eat. The reason it was a mistake was, by the second run after lunch, the switchback happened. It changed back to sleet, but on the rainier side.

Worse than that, some of the snow, especially near the bottom got real sticky. Worse, it quickly moved up to just below Bravo. The top of Heaven's Gate was really sweet, but in order to get to the bottom, I had to go thru snow in which I quickly became concerned that I would leave my knees.

I gave it up around 3:00 with no complaints. I got inside, looked out the slider, and it was snowing like crazy.

Remember when you were younger and woke up early in the morning to check out if Santa had arrived. I got up around 4am, turned on the porch light, looked at the radar hoping we had at least 8" of new powder. What a disappointment! There was a little on my front porch and nothing coming down from the skies. When I awoke and called our snow phone we had reported 3" at the base, so I wasn't too disappointed that I had an 8am conference call.

When I wandered to the lift at 9am the report was that 5" had fallen at the summit and that we were in for mixed precip and maybe even some rain. I figured I should get a few early runs in and then catch up on some office work. However, the first run down a groomed Birch with at least 3-5" of new snow got my psyche back in balance. As already said it was a very different texture and it took me a few turns to figure is out. Creamy is probably the best description. A second run down Twist was close to ectasy as it had been groomed flat and was really smooth and fast with the new snow on top. Then an Eden and then a Domino and then a CR into the woods and then a Morning Star and a Sunrise and a Birch and a Slide Brook. Then I did some office work.

We had a touch of drizzle in mid-morning up high on Casterock as there was a pocket of warm air at higher elevation. The lower you got the better the quality ironically. Other than that we had some sleet, but mostly snow and by snow plan at 1pm we had received 8"inches of snow and it was still snowing at 8pm on the mountain.

For the second time in a row, the snow line was just southeast of us. I went up with the groomers tonight at 5pm and it was snowing furiously at the summit and the snow that was laid down was soft and inviting, and that means that tomorrow morning is going to be A+. I think it will be busy because of the Valentine's Day special ($14), so do get out early. It will be worth it.

The luck we've been having this month has been phenominal, and as a result, the last 3 out of 4 days I've been out (since last Thursday) have been powder (or snow) days. While it doesn't look good for my amount of vacation time remaining, it looks great where it counts - within me and knowing that I'm kicking some serious tail this season, riding in more powder days than I've ever experienced, and the best conditions I've ever experienced. Last Thursday was perfect - Saturday was excellent - Sunday was better - today was the "cream" on top of Jay's snowdae and I'm expecting tomorrow to be even better - despite the fact that my 2 friends who I was going to ride with aren't coming - so it'll be Day 24 of riding solo, out of 25 days, but on a day like I'm hoping tomorrow will be, who cares?

I'm just hoping to have a nice clear bluebird day one of these days - it'd be good for some cool pics, and for visib, seems like every day I ride, its snowing - not that I'm complaining!