This morning was a bit warmer, with a stout breeze transporting the snow, filling in many of the lines on the hill.   This filling feature continued throughout the day, making some of the more peripheral lines continually rebuffed for each run.  Later in the day,  the precipitation began to move in, accumulating quickly, and offering some nice untracked on areas that get little traffic.  Mineral Basin opened around Noon after being closed for such a long stretch.  The ubiquitous slide activity, covered large areas with debris.  The untracked lines were badly wind damaged, offering some serious breakable  crust.  Some of the lines off of the Baldy Express were offering some low angle relief, with some smooth accumulation, but that was the extent of the encouraging reports.  I felt lucky to get out of Mineral with out injury, it was that difficult, not to mention the visibility issues.  Those conditions are only going to improve as we get more snow tonight.  The chunks and debris issues should be kept in mind, no matter how much we get.  Tomorrow, will be a great day, after today’s wind work smoothed the dance floor on the steep sections as well as the trees.  Gad 2 will also be benefiting greatly from the accumulation and wind work.  I got a fair bit of feed back from the Cirque Traverse, with cautionary insight as well as descriptions of better cover than expectations.  I will venture out there with the next installment, but I have to say that most of the sections are filling in nicely and can be approached with confidence.  It could be busy tomorrow, so get there early for the best of the day.   Ciao!!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 5:19 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.