Mark Renson
New member
Temps were very balmy under brilliant skies on Saturday morning. Up the Double I went and I took on Upper-Lower Panther. Snow was sloppy and heavy and not corn. My heart sank as bare spots were rearing their ugly heads. I had to go to the Practice Slope to check Eaton's Run and made a return trip to place bamboo on some bare spots revealing themselves in blind areas. <BR> Off of The Single, my spirits greatly lifted as I found classic sping conditions on Fall Line, Glade, Beaver, Lift Line and Cat Bowl. I made several runs and encountered great user-friendly honest bumps and especially fun roller-coaster ride skiing on Lift Line. I ran into Roger and we did a woods run which I was skeptical of at first, but was rewarded with great spring skiing bumps. <BR> Quacky was my sweep run and as usual, it was an outstanding run and I found great surfaces on upper Chipmunk! <BR> This morning, I awoke to thundering winds and clear skies. Temps had plunged below freezing and to top all of this, it had rained during the wee hours. It was ugly, man. Jamey our GM was out grooming, doing the job of getting us a lot of skiing with just a little snow as he has all Winter long (ya' call this a Winter?). Just navigating from the Patrol Shack to the Basebox was terrifying due to the glare ice. <BR> My assignment was to close the top of Grand Canyon at Broadway. Initially, we opened Antelope to Broadway and Fox/Vixen and Bunny to the bottom, in effect forming a huge "Y" on the mountain. Where it was groomed, the snow was actually great as the wet snow underneath was churned up. <BR> Mid-morning, the radio crackled and a patroller announced that Chute amazingly was "not terrible", so it was opened as was Cat Bowl later on. <BR> Conditions fell apart in a hurry, though. Temps dropped, winds howled, the snow set up and got scraped. It was becoming downright abominable. It's gonna' take a gargantuan dump to bail this Winter out. Face it folks, this season has laid an egg. <BR> I helped a little kid sprawled out on the ice get back on his skis as he was in dire difficulty regaining his feet on the glare ice that was revealing itself in patches in greater numbers. <BR> Snow squalls funnelled through App Gap in greater frequency. A dusting would fall but almost immediately get blown into the woods. During mid-afternoon, the PD could see that I was getting bored and suggested I go check upper Canyon if I wanted a little adventure. As I checked it, I could see that it was semi-doable except a sheet of glare ice from side-to-side at the crux and I deemed it a no-go regarding opening it. <BR> At about 3:30PM, winds increased even more and the decision was made to shut the place down for the hafl dozen or so folks that remained to ski. <BR> We'll make it to next weekend for the NATO festivities, but we certainly can't take another thaw. <BR> <BR> Face it, it just ain't gonna' happen this Winter.