I was ready to take a powder day off from work Thursday, but decided against it when the snow level was 6,500-7,000 in Wednesday's storm. From the base area you could see all green trees for about 200 feet up, and above that they were all snow laden.
The positive impact of the storm was that it snowed about 18 inches on the upper mountain, and the dense snow did an amazing job of covering the rocks. Everthing up there is wide open with a uniform surface of carvable packed powder.
The center of the picture is a panorama view of the terrain served by the 1,000 vertical Thunder Mt. chair. From the ridgeline about 3/4 of the way down the pic are fall lines dropping another 1,000 down to the parking lot.
This is a zoomed view of the area around the Thunder chair. There are 2 upper intermediate groomed runs, Robin's at left and Skyline at right.
Zoomed view of South Bowl, all naturally gladed for about 800 vertical. At the bottom is a 1/4 mile traverse back to the Thunder chair. This cuts down on traffic, especially snowboarders, and is thus a prime spot for freshies on powder days.
Thursday and Friday were cloudy and Saturday was the first sunny day after the storm. The morning was fairly cold was occasional wind.
It warmed up around lunch time but the "Baldy cloud" arrived about 2PM with occasional fog on varying parts of the mountain.
Chair 4 was opened about 8:30 AM. Most of its snow was wind packed but there was some powder in the trees.
I also put about 1,000 vertical of first tracks (visible in this pic before I cut it to 39K) down Holcumac about 9:45, just as the sun was softening, with a bit of bushwacking after that to reach the trail under the lower chair.
After that I spent nearly all day on Thunder. Skyline in the morning was about as good as I've ever seen it. Even South Bowl has the smooth packed powder and I did 4 runs out there.
It was so good Richard decided to try it too.
Andy's, Herb's and skier's right of South Bowl softened a bit in the sun. When I went in for an early lunch at 11:30 the Thunder lift line had not exceeded 5 minutes.
Back out at noon I continued running quick laps on Thunder. Some more people came in for half day skiing and the line got up to 10 minutes, so I took a run to the bottom via Wind Slab. It had similar snow to Thunder and the lower trail was temporarily soft then.
After 3PM the Thunder line was back under 5 minutes so I did 8 more runs before it closed. I skied Morgan's/Bentley's at the end to avoid the congestion under the lower chair, which had gone back to hardpack under the cloud.
What was most amazing today is that in Baldy's first full operation weekend day since 2001, with nice weather and nearly perfect surface conditions on 80% of the mountain, that so few people showed up especially in the morning. I would never have believed that I would ski 31,100 vertical today.
The positive impact of the storm was that it snowed about 18 inches on the upper mountain, and the dense snow did an amazing job of covering the rocks. Everthing up there is wide open with a uniform surface of carvable packed powder.
The center of the picture is a panorama view of the terrain served by the 1,000 vertical Thunder Mt. chair. From the ridgeline about 3/4 of the way down the pic are fall lines dropping another 1,000 down to the parking lot.
This is a zoomed view of the area around the Thunder chair. There are 2 upper intermediate groomed runs, Robin's at left and Skyline at right.
Zoomed view of South Bowl, all naturally gladed for about 800 vertical. At the bottom is a 1/4 mile traverse back to the Thunder chair. This cuts down on traffic, especially snowboarders, and is thus a prime spot for freshies on powder days.
Thursday and Friday were cloudy and Saturday was the first sunny day after the storm. The morning was fairly cold was occasional wind.
It warmed up around lunch time but the "Baldy cloud" arrived about 2PM with occasional fog on varying parts of the mountain.
Chair 4 was opened about 8:30 AM. Most of its snow was wind packed but there was some powder in the trees.
I also put about 1,000 vertical of first tracks (visible in this pic before I cut it to 39K) down Holcumac about 9:45, just as the sun was softening, with a bit of bushwacking after that to reach the trail under the lower chair.
After that I spent nearly all day on Thunder. Skyline in the morning was about as good as I've ever seen it. Even South Bowl has the smooth packed powder and I did 4 runs out there.
It was so good Richard decided to try it too.
Andy's, Herb's and skier's right of South Bowl softened a bit in the sun. When I went in for an early lunch at 11:30 the Thunder lift line had not exceeded 5 minutes.
Back out at noon I continued running quick laps on Thunder. Some more people came in for half day skiing and the line got up to 10 minutes, so I took a run to the bottom via Wind Slab. It had similar snow to Thunder and the lower trail was temporarily soft then.
After 3PM the Thunder line was back under 5 minutes so I did 8 more runs before it closed. I skied Morgan's/Bentley's at the end to avoid the congestion under the lower chair, which had gone back to hardpack under the cloud.
What was most amazing today is that in Baldy's first full operation weekend day since 2001, with nice weather and nearly perfect surface conditions on 80% of the mountain, that so few people showed up especially in the morning. I would never have believed that I would ski 31,100 vertical today.