So, the holiday weekend is over, and it’s now the last day of November. A series of storms made us REALLY hopeful that we would open for the Thanksgiving weekend, but, alas, it was not meant to be.

Now, we’re looking ahead into the month of December. A lot of people think of this as the “25 Days of Christmas”, but for me, it’s the “21 Days of Winter”.  It’s easy to forget that winter doesn’t officially begin until three weeks into the month, on December 21st. So, as we wait for the magic amount of snowfall to open our favorite late-autumn playground (who wants to wait until the 21st?), I thought I would give you a bird’s eye view of where we stand.

This photo is from about half-way up the mountain, you can see how the snow depths vary depending on the angle of the slopes and where the wind has blown it.

This view from the summit is stunning, as usual.

The trained eye can see that the snowpack has some surface hoar developing. We’ve seen some warm winds and several sunny days on the mountain since the last snowfall (on Friday).

This view, looking north/northwest looks pretty promising, but the snow depths range all the way from 10-18 inches depending on where the wind deposited it.

As we  head down Main Street, you can see the variations in depth even more clearly.

Zooming in on the same shot, you can see how the surface undulates. Those high spots are rocks. They did a number on the bottom of my skis. Luckily, I expected that and wore an old pair. Right now, our mountain crews are trying to pack down as many slopes as possible to preserve the snow we have and prepare a base. As you can guess from these photos, there are many places where we can’t safely operate our equipment just yet. On the bright side, we have a LOT more snow than we did this time last year, so let’s keep our hopes up, (and our tips up). As I was reminded during this pre-season run, you never know what lies around the next turn!

– April