12/11/06, Snoq Central- Jekyll and Hyde

Ahh, the miserable glory, the painful joy, the ying and the yang. Night skiing, the parking lot upon arrival was thick with big, wet flakes. Lifts were nearly empty, whoohoo! The snow was soft, 4-5 inches deep and thick as day old porridge. Three runs in, the "snice" at the base had turned to rain; not gentle, PNW soft rain, but very serious, very wet rain. And so it remained for the rest of the night- first 400 feet of the lift ride was solid downpour, followed by "snow-hail" (aka "snail"), and then hammering down huge flakes at the top. The initial third of the skiing was pretty fun (you could do cool little power slides with the tails through the mank), then very thick wet sludge, and then just rain soaked garbage back to the lift. The snow pack could be doing some very strange things over at Alpy; the pass is the freeze line... I suspect there are going to be some very impressive snowfall totals at higher elevations.