News Item: : All good things...
(Category: Red Stuff Dept.)
Posted by UnRed Dave
Tuesday 18 January 01:13:26PM
...must come to an end, at least for the time being.
The glorious powder conditions of late have ceased to be. A massive pulse of warmth has smashed ashore chasing the frigid Arctic air back to where it belongs. Unfortunately this has left us with rain to the ridgetops and glum looks on our faces.
It was looking hopeful yesterday with 18cm of new during the day making for some terrific turns on Red. The roads getting to the hill were frickin brutal and Motherlode closed at around noon due to extreme winds, but the trees on both sides of Sallys were sublime. It's been a long time since I've been able to just point em anywhere in the trees on Red and feel full control. It was one of those rare days where the riding got better as the day wore on, despite the fact that everyone else at the Mountain was doing the same thing. Old bastards was especially nice, finding fresh line after fresh line all afternoon. The storm was obviously warming as the snow was quite dense with an almost silky texture underfoot. I hooked up with Chrispy and Andrea for most of my runs with a sweet out down the backside to the Mine Museum for last run.
There was much talk of "tomorrow is going to be SICK on Granite" and I fully intended on hitting the big chair in the morning to sample the new snow. I was up at 5:00am to trackset at Blackjack with all my DH gear on hand in the back of the truck so I could just hop across the highway, once done, and bag some freshies. At 8:00 o'clock the first drops of moisture started hitting the windshield of the BR and it wasn't white. By the time I was done it was fully raining and, as I could see most of the way up the Slides, figured it must be ugly up top. Home I went.
The forcast says it is supposed to cool to more seasonal temps over the next few days with continued precip in the form of more snow. This is good news. In the mean time the CAA is warning of a widespread natural avalanche cycle to play out in the next 24-48 hrs. In a way this is good too as we've had a lot of storm loading on dodgy layers lately which needs to settle down. Conditions this Winter seem to be jumping around and changing abruptly, going from -23 to + 1 in 24 hrs a case in point. I'm thinking that, as quickly as everything has turned to shit, it can swing back to being good again just as fast. That's my prediction, let's hope I'm right...
This news item is from UnRed.com
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