Thanks, Shane

I never get tired of this. Thanks, Shane, for the memories.



++++++++++++++++

Snowing with some enthusiasm out there right now. My ski partner bagged on today's tour (understandable). Went up yesterday for some XC, ran into a couple of heliski guides who reported thin but marginally skiable snow on Snowflake. They'd done some digging and the garbage had melted out on that slope, anyway - last weekend's snow was all that was underneath.

Will ski XC again today, tour tomorrow. Likely to stick with low angle trees, but we'll see what we see.

Ullr's howling

Well, it's been more than a month since my last blog update, and we're still waiting for real skiing to arrive. Some folks I know have been out beating their boards up for terrible turns in Ambrosia and the Dollars, but it hardly seems worth the effort and the base damage from what I can see.

Ullr has sent the storm, though, and it's been howling outside for several days now. The snow is starting to accumulate north of here, and there are even some flakes falling in the Rubies. The forecast is for snow for the next several days... with the howling wind and the sugar underneath it's going to be scary, scary, scary for a while.

My dad lived in this valley for more than eighty years, and used to tell the heliski guys that you couldn't count on skiable snow until the end of January. This is one of those years that is proving my old man right. At least - I hope it will, and I'm sure the heliski guys are hoping he's right, too.

Patience, grasshopper...