powderfreak

Finished December with a -5 departure and snow cover throughout here in the valley with frequent snows. Currently a frigid -6F this evening after last night’s refresher and these well-below normal arctic shots continue with frequency. Normal is 28/9. Today is 23/-6 because of a midnight high last night. Daytime hours never got above 16F.

Ended up with a 7.5” measured total in 24 hours at 1500ft. Gondola was on wind hold so never got to the High Road plot. Skiing was fluff on top of pond ice or slick hardpack. Steeper stuff was very sporty.

Yeah, picked up another 1.5" after that for a total of 7.5". Total fluff on top of like tilted pond ice on the Front Four lol. Looks great in photos. Skis like you want to hold on for dear life.

Saw 6" overnight at Barnes Camp and that 1,500ft elevation saw snowpack go from 23" to 29".

6” overnight at the base of the ski area. 29” depth, up from 23” yesterday.

Have fun or not .

Yes it was a typo. 59”.

The good vibe that a multiple snowstorm stretch brings is hard to beat by one big one. A 10-inch event, 5-inch event, and 10-inch event in an every 3rd day succession is a 7-10 day binge of winter. Getting a big 20” event then nothing pales in terms of the overall mood/outlook.

The Fata Morgana effect is awesome in this photo. Looking through the inversion and distortion of the horizon. Looks like the Grand Mesa on the right side of the photo.

Yeah a chair barn helps a lot. Still need to de-ice sheave wheels, rope and towers… but it’s a lot easier than de-icing 100 detachable grips. Chair storage is a big deal. We have it for the FourRunner Quad, but not Sensation Quad and that’s the photo I posted of the grips all iced up. Lift maintenance has to bang the ice off each and every one of those. Which by the way, hats off to all lift maintenance teams today. They were the ones up on towers, in the elements, all day long banging ice… it’s hard physical work, cold and wet… tethered in way off the ground. They are the real heroes.

I’ll have to look that up. Curious how.

Heavy icing… chairlifts don’t enjoy it.

Getting mangled snowflakes to start. 27/17

Latent heat release is real. SLK with a quick 0.07” at temps in the 20s. Gotta be slick out there. The ice maps are just QPF at temps 32F or lower… but a tenth of an inch as ZR gets slippery in a hurry on roads, driveways, parking lots, etc.