Cream cheese

Today's post is not about food; "cream cheese" is an attempt to describe the texture of the 6 inches of new snow that fell overnight. Whatever you call it, in my five seasons skiing this mountain, I've never seen snow quite like it. Usually with conditions like they were last night - the temperature around 30F, the humidity higher than usual, and windy - what we end up with is cement; heavy, sticky and very tiring to ski. Today's snow was definitely crusty, but somehow it wasn't all that hard to ski. In fact it was an absolute hoot.

With the wind, the gondola was still closed when I arrived at the base around 9.30 am, so it was the Christie Express and then across to Thunderhead. It was a little slow, but so much better than the days only two seasons ago before the Christie Express when a closed Gondola meant an hour and a half to get up the mountain.

When I jumped on the Storm Peak Express the word was that Sundown was closed, so I skied Closet with the intention of traversing through Rainbow Saddle back to Storm Peak. But when I hit Duster and saw Sundown running I knew I had to head down that way and ski the trees some more. Almost exactly like Wednesday, from there it became Sundown Express, ski the trees, repeat (six times). The Priest Creek face is the best tree skiing in the world, so who can blame me!

Here's today's track for 17,980 vertical ft in 2 hours and 53 minutes. The final verdict; a better day than I expected and much better than April 4 has any right to be!