thar she blows

This past weekend definitely goes down as my biggest fails in outfit planning: having not learned any lessons from being cold all day Saturday, I looked at the weather report - a little warmer but windier - and wore the exact same thing on Sunday.  While temperatures were a little bit warmer, I was cold all day, despite sticking a pair of hand warmers in my mittens. What I should have done, knowing we'd just be skiing groomers all day and not working very hard, was wear the light down jacket I picked up last summer.  That would have been perfect. 

We didn't expect a big crowd on Easter and the Wildcat base parking lot never filled up to halfway, even by the end of the day.  The lone parking attendant was so bored that he was alternately hulu-hooping and riding his long board around the parking lot.  (When he does both at once, I'll be really impressed.)  We went to Sugarloaf immediately where the snow wasn't rock hard; slowly warming, it was like skiing on granulated sugar.  The wind blew consistently, however, and then got gusty enough that we held onto the chair at least once a chair ride throughout the day.  We moved over to Supreme around 11 a.m., finding hardly anyone there.  It was much less windy too, with just a few gusts and snow-devils swirling at the top. 

For the record: the Easter Bunny is a 

much faster skier than I am

After lunch we went back to Collins and stayed there for the afternoon.  The trails that were at the right angle - Corkscrew, the top of Meadow, parts of Main Street and Mambo - got softer with every run (by the time we left, the bottom half of Corkscrew was heavy and very soft) but the trails that weren't soaking up the sun stayed pretty firm.  You could get an edge in and things didn't seem to be quite as scraped off as Saturday (with the exception of High Main Street, which H reported as much icier than the day before).  We rode with a patroller and asked him about last year's new avalanche puppy Fitz, whom we hadn't seen all season: avalanche dogs can't test for their Class A ratings until they're 18 months old and Fitz won't be 18 until the end of ski season, so that's why he hasn't been around so much.  Then, on the top of the very next chairlift ride, there Fitz was, outside the patrol shack at the top of Collins - he's turned into a very beautiful young dog!

Once again we skied out at 3 p.m.  We had a quick beer on the tailgate as some clouds made their way into the canyon from the Salt Lake valley;  the winds had brought a dust storm in from out west.  Time to call it a day.