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When the Winter Winds Blow
January 13, 2021
When I looked at the weather forecast on Monday, I was sure I’d be skiing today. It called for snow on Monday night, snow on Tuesday, snow on Tuesday night, many many inches of snow. The first two parts were correct, but last night things took a turn and the snow came down as rain and the winds kicked up and today no lifts are spinning because it’s just not safe to run them when it’s gusting up to 80 miles per hour (not that it would be pleasant skiing on hard crust anyway … it’s cooled down now so the slush from this morning is now iced over). So instead of skiing, I’m going to share some photos I’ve taken this month of all the snow we had before this latest storm fizzled.
Skiing while it’s actively snowing, like I was doing the day I snapped the selfie below, can often mean having whole runs to one’s self. Many folks don’t like to ski while the flakes are coming down, since visibility is usually low due to clouds/fog/flat light and the flakes can feel like a bunch of tiny needles hitting one’s face as one zips down the slopes. Not much to be done for the visibility other than having a good pair of goggles with an appropriate lens, but pulling a neck gaiter over the face takes care of the needling.
Snowy low visibility days just make me appreciate all the more when the view opens back up again.
By the time the first round of January storms slackened our truck was so buried in snow that just this little bit of the antenna stuck out.
In the middle of all this delightful wintery weather, the sitting president incited a coup attempt, and I took a few minutes away from following the news to calm down by enjoying the glow of our Christmas lights.
The mountain is finally looking sufficiently wintery, and sometimes it’s just so gorgeous I have to stop and take photos even though I’ve already taken many many photos from similar (or the exact same) spots. Pixels are cheap, and when climate change has done in the ski industry I’ll have something to look back on (assuming I’m still around then and my neighbors haven’t killed me with COVID-19 or something else).
Tomorrow I plan to be back out there, weather permitting. No telling if the season might end early again. Already night skiing has been canceled this coming weekend, a holiday weekend, because there were so many folks doing night skiing this past weekend not following the masking rules and harassing employees about it (night skiing is a somewhat different crowd than day skiing). Some people really are deplorable.