Thursday, February 2, 2012

A Mountain of Ice

This has been one of the strangest winters I've ever experienced.  There's been no snow and not too much cold.  Went skiing at Waterville Valley on Thursday, Feb 2 and thought that we might luck out: there'd been some more rain in Massachusetts on Wednesday and I thought it was probably snow in the mountains.  But it was ice.  The slopes were "groomed" and had a nice corduroy sheen, but we soon realized that what we were seeing was just grooved ice.  The mountain was covered with it from top to bottom and the sun never came out so it didn't soften up all day.

Whatever ... we had a great time.  It's not like you were skiing through nice snow and all of a sudden there was a patch of ice.  You *knew* there was ice ... that's all there was.  In some areas it had been chipped up enough to afford some purchase and you just had to ski from spot to spot.  Not bad at all, in fact it was pretty enjoyable, especially since there were next to no other skiers there.

So pretty good, but I'd still like some really good snow (and no people).