Friday morning was cold.  I could see my breath as I stepped out of the trailer and surveyed the morning.  The temp. on the peak was 17 degrees with a brisk NW wind.  I hit the Forklift chair first off to let softening occur and checked on the Twins situation, which was clean and green to stay open for a bit longer due to the cold.  I took a Mineral Basin recon run to check out the aspects and get a handle on the timing, but decided to forgo the tour to take advantage of the expanded grooming and retilling which had been done overnight and early this morning.  The retilling gave the groomers a edge-able consistency ,but each turn drew up the cookie crumbles.  They were later mashed with the warming of the sun, but certainly not by the air, which stayed cold and crisp long into the morning.  With the wind factor, the air stayed down right cold.  Regulator finally broke at 12:00 Noon and was really special with granular sugar wall to wall.  The lower mountain remained buttery with out the dreaded glue spots developing, even on  the cat tracks.  The off trail became workable as well as the afternoon progressed, giving the hill much larger scope.  Still the Western exposures are too marred by slide debris to ensure any real lines, so the North and the East sections offer the best off trail skiing when the softening occurs.  Keep a watchful eye out to catch the short window.  The  peak temp was still only 28 degrees at 1:00PM to give you an idea of the overall air mass.  Tomorrow might come in a tad warmer , but the skiing is great right off on first tram, so get the most out of these last few days of the regular season.  And hey, dress for how you want it to be!!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Snow Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.