Winter's Return?
March has not been your typical big snow month (yet), instead we seem to have been a few degrees on the positive side and all those wet systems are coming in, well, wet. With two big rain events so far this month it looks like things are about to change for the better. Things froze up on Saturday and Sunday's system dropped over 23 cm of pretty light fluffy pow. Time to get back into the backcountry, or is it?
We hit the Whitewater backcountry skiing Acidophilus and White Queen on Sunday and there was snow but it was far from ideal. On the north facing Acidophilus the snow quality was top shelf but it was the rock hard bed surface that posed the problem. "Sluff management" was the catch phrase of the day as anything over 30 degrees and that 23cm would chase you down like a rabid dog. The skiing was pretty decent with the occasional knock on the frozen base but the 23cm on top of that was fluffy light and super fast.
(click the images for a larger view)
On the south aspect skiing down White Queen things were quite different. We reached the top around 2:00 and the sun has already done it's thing. "Schmoo" was all that was to be had. That in itself would be ok but this on top of a rock solid ice crust and it was pretty much un-skiable. Each turn pealed out all the snow there was to ski and put you off balance and struggling to maintain your up right status. Last night this aspect likely tightened up harder than a (insert your own catch phase here), so skiing will be quite challenging until we get some additional snow which seems to be on it's way today.
If anyone else has any beta on their weekend adventures please feel free to speak up, to see all of our data click on over to our Suunto Moves Count page here.
