Okemo, VT 1/3/00

[GregB]

<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 1/4/00. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>As I was going out the door this morning to go to work, I looked at my skies in the garage and felt how warm it was outside. I suddenly felt flu like symptoms overwhelm me so I called in sick and decided to bash some spring moguls at Okemo. It was raining on and off the whole drive which had me a little worried that it would be wet day of skiing. A brief shower in the morning was it. The sun struggled to shine but the clouds prevailed. A cluster fly bussed me on the lift and I thought to myself, is this January third. All the McGroomed trails had set up overnight and were a little crusty but skier traffic, what little there was, helped soften things up. As the day went on they got softer and a layer of corn and granular became the primary surface condition. There were several bare spots starting to emerge on most of the trails. I wasn't there to carve the McGroomed, I was there for the corn moguls and I found them on Upper Chief, Sel's Choice and The Plunge. The bumps on Upper Chief were still a little frozen because of the higher elevation. The Plunge and Sel's has soft butter corn bumps and they just got better during the day as more people skied them. The tops of the moguls were dimpled like a golf ball but still very edgeable. I knew that I probably wouldn't see spring bumps for a couple of months so I skied them until I my body was total Jello. The snow is melting but the coverage is still excellent. When temps get colder this will all freeze into a hard mess. They need natural snow bad. Lift lines were nonexistent. My body is pleasantly sore this morning.