I wasn't planning on heading up today. Been busy at work and needed to sleep in a bit, so figured I'd wake up around 9 or so and look at the snow report.
It said 1" fresh and falling as of 7AM. It was raining outside. A quick calculation led me to believe there would be 3-4" fresh on the choice northeast aspects on Thunder. This was too good a prospect to pass up, and I headed up and got on Chair 1 around 11AM.
The prediction was spot on.
This was obviously not a waist-deep frolic of a powder session, but there was plenty of fluffy joy to be found in the right places. Started the day skier's left on Emile's, threw a big old spray of powder on my first turn and insta-grinned, knowing the day would be better than advertised. Once that got sufficiently pillaged, moved over to Robin's trees, which were even better, and less tracked (probably because they're much less obvious). Finally headed over to Goldridge, which is where the real money was at- lapped this most of the day with an ear-to-ear grin the whole time, though it did start to get pretty tracked around 1PM or so.
The sun came out around 2PM, lifting the veil of clouds over the resort, which revealed that the most obvious line on Emile's was still essentially untouched- the drainage on the top third of the run. Everyone had been so gung-ho about traversing into the trees that the low ground was yet virgin snow. A few laps down this were glorious- huge, happy, snow-spraying turns.
Saw people headed out of the Tube, they said it was great in there. I didn't venture over but believe them for sure.
Asked a 'troller about the possibility of Bentley's to finish the day- he gave a little smirk and said essentially "well, it's not gonna be patrolled, but it's technically not closed." This was enough for me, and I headed down to the road. Only a couple tracks in that direction. It occurs to me later looking at the website that this area IS technically closed, and the patroller must not have been aware of it. Oh well.
Bentley's was very nice to finish- quite a few easily avoidable bony spots, but quite a few creamy areas of hero snow as well. Coverage was not an issue until the very bottom. A great run to end a great day.
To be sure there were crunchy spots everywhere today, but man... didn't expect to have another day like this this season. It might not have been a day worth mentioning in the less snow-starved parts of the country, but for this SoCal powder hound, it was glorious.
It said 1" fresh and falling as of 7AM. It was raining outside. A quick calculation led me to believe there would be 3-4" fresh on the choice northeast aspects on Thunder. This was too good a prospect to pass up, and I headed up and got on Chair 1 around 11AM.
The prediction was spot on.
This was obviously not a waist-deep frolic of a powder session, but there was plenty of fluffy joy to be found in the right places. Started the day skier's left on Emile's, threw a big old spray of powder on my first turn and insta-grinned, knowing the day would be better than advertised. Once that got sufficiently pillaged, moved over to Robin's trees, which were even better, and less tracked (probably because they're much less obvious). Finally headed over to Goldridge, which is where the real money was at- lapped this most of the day with an ear-to-ear grin the whole time, though it did start to get pretty tracked around 1PM or so.
The sun came out around 2PM, lifting the veil of clouds over the resort, which revealed that the most obvious line on Emile's was still essentially untouched- the drainage on the top third of the run. Everyone had been so gung-ho about traversing into the trees that the low ground was yet virgin snow. A few laps down this were glorious- huge, happy, snow-spraying turns.
Saw people headed out of the Tube, they said it was great in there. I didn't venture over but believe them for sure.
Asked a 'troller about the possibility of Bentley's to finish the day- he gave a little smirk and said essentially "well, it's not gonna be patrolled, but it's technically not closed." This was enough for me, and I headed down to the road. Only a couple tracks in that direction. It occurs to me later looking at the website that this area IS technically closed, and the patroller must not have been aware of it. Oh well.
Bentley's was very nice to finish- quite a few easily avoidable bony spots, but quite a few creamy areas of hero snow as well. Coverage was not an issue until the very bottom. A great run to end a great day.
To be sure there were crunchy spots everywhere today, but man... didn't expect to have another day like this this season. It might not have been a day worth mentioning in the less snow-starved parts of the country, but for this SoCal powder hound, it was glorious.
