Skiers are passionate people. They endure the spring thaw, summer heat and autumn rain, just waiting for the snow to return. So when you see SO MUCH snow fall from the sky, it can be hard to understand why your favorite ski area isn’t open yet.

Naturally, we get excited, too. When we saw 8″ of fresh snow fall this weekend, we were all optimistic that we would NOW have enough to groom the slopes and get the season open. Check out these fanatics who strapped into their boots and snapped into their skis in their living room anticipating the rush of their first run of the season.

Yes, we…I mean…they… actually pretended to take a run down Main Street, over to Slobovia, then back to the lodge for a beer. Who DOES that?

With that sense of hope and excitement all around, our crews showed up early this morning to assess the mountain conditions. Unfortunately, we’re still not there.

Temperatures were in the single digits for most of the weekend, which sucked all the moisture out of the fresh snow. I know, it’s a frustrating and familiar story, one we’re getting more than a little bit tired of.

Our crews are out today doing what we call ‘track packing’ wherever they can. That means they try to pack the snow down into a consolidated base with a snow cat’s tracks rather than its tiller. This worked better in some areas than others.

In parts of the base area, 16″ of untracked snow packed down into a 4-5″ base. That means the grousers on the tracks were actually hitting the ground in several key places. After a slope is track packed, it needs to be “groomed” with a tiller (That’s what makes it look like corduroy).

So even though we wake up to scenes like this….

After you put a 17,000-19,000 pound snow cat on it, it looks like this…

Instead of refining the surface, a second pass could cut to the ground and dig up dirt.

But it’s not ALL bad news…there’s more snow in the forecast Tuesday night and also Thursday.  Check it out.

And when Mother Nature decides it’s our turn, we will definitely be ready to turn the chairlifts.

– April