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Anonymous
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Made it up to ski tonight despite fears of the brutal crust observed (and felt) sunday at MRG, where I fell on a green run when I gomered off on a corner and hit an ungroomed section. Hit hard, stopped dead, jammed hand. Ouch. <BR> <BR>The question was: could a day and a half fix the nastiness that had coated the hills in sucky ice and crust? Watching the squalls getting stuck over Mansfield yesterday and today sent us up for a night ascent and (hopeful) safe descent... <BR> <BR>Turns out the biggest risk wasn't the skiing, but was trying to stupidly drive up all the way despite the previous rains and freeze cycle on the access road. My buddies insist on trying to make it up in the truck every time we head out there...Got stuck once and had to use sticks and shovels to get my friend's 4-Runner out. Finally gave up spinning up the road, left it at the bottom of the one hill and skinned up with our petzels on. <BR> <BR>Snow and blowing wind seemed to coast over us, as the tree cover kept things calmer at the surface while an impressive wind hooted overhead. Kinda spooky, particularly when one of us would slide backwards on that damn crust lurking beneath the six inches of fluff. Happily, the crust is no longer breakable. Don't know why, but it is like a skiny armour coating that now has snow on it. What we found on our descent was nice powder skiing, with one caveat. Ski the fall line, as any cross the hill stuff sent you onto that crust and into a slide. If one did fall (which I did till I stuck to parallel turns) only one's buttocks busting thru the crusty subsurface stopped the slide. <BR> <BR>Quite a rush. Thought it would suck, thought we could get hurt, thought we wouldn't be able to ski down. HA HA. Turns out we had a powder run. Left some pretty curvy lines all over the untracked. Yum. Oh yeah. One more point. Due to the bomber crust and powda combo, you can ski anywhere that is open enough (and the measuring log shows the deepest snowpack this season. Go Ski.