baldyskier
Member
The weather forecast for Friday and Saturday was strangely similar to last week's, but this week the storm lived up to it's billing, at least the Friday night/Saturday morning portion. There was snow falling (and on the ground) below the tunnels. Mt. Baldy village had a significant amount of snow. I put on chains a little above the village, but one of them popped off about a half-mile up the road. The hook on the inside of the chain had gotten bent and broken off. I had spare parts, but it did slow me down some. Traffic wasn't too bad, considering it was after 9 AM by this time. I did hit a 10 minute stop or so on one of the steep sections. The ticket line was nearly non-existent at 9:30 or so (2 or 3 people in front of me). By the time I got to Thunder Mtn. Chair 3 had been running awhile. I still found decent powder in the Goldridge trees, with moderate tracks. I tried South Bowl, but it wasn't open. I waited awhile before returning, and it got moderately tracked in the interim. Perhaps I just missed the opening the first time. This storm was apparently very windy, as some areas even in the South Bowl Chutes were a little hard underfoot from the old base. Other areas had maybe 18-30" on top of the base. The powder surface in the deeper areas was somewhat windblown, but skied very nicely. I was told later that South Bowl's main run (dropping in to skier's right soon after the entry "gate" off from Skyline) was more consistently covered with deeper snow. I didn't get a chance to check it out. I went down to my car at about 1:30, by way of Bentley's. There was good coverage there, in general, although some areas/exposures were blown off almost to the old base. I went back up at about 2:15, and found that Chair 4 had been opened. There was nice, windblown powder, and I got in a few runs. Once again, care had to be taken to avoid the areas that had been partially stripped by the wind, although it wasn't too hard to do. The wind was blowing fairly hard at times during the day, although not enough to make skiing dangerous or uncomfortable (with proper dress). The temperature up on the mountain was around 20 degrees or so, which should help preserve the snow. The liftlines were short all day. I took Bentley's down again at the end of the day, and hit some nice snow, for the most part. I took a few pictures, although my camera's batteries died soon in the morning. I got "fresh" ones when I went to my car, but they were threatening to die, too. I'll try to post some pictures maybe tomorrow.
Link to pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Baldyskier ... 731iqL5eA#
Link to pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/Baldyskier ... 731iqL5eA#
