Last night’s storm was NUKING…as anyone in McCall will tell you. Snowing sideways, blustery winds, near whiteout conditions. But daybreak on the mountain revealed a slightly different tale.

Instead of the 12″ we were hoping for, Mother Nature blasted us with 7″ of snow and scoured the mountain with wind.

In the base area, things look pretty sweet – snow piling up in the parking lot….

…and beautiful sights to behold next to the Blue Bird Quad.

It looks so sweet in these areas because they are relatively sheltered from the wind.

Just a few yards away, the effects of the wind can be seen more clearly.

Even with 7 inches on the snow marker, there’s only a little bit of snow standing on these tables.

Compare that to yesterday, before the wind…lots of snow on top, but not as much on the ground.

The story of the windstorm gets even louder as you go up in elevation.

Check out the snow on the Bear’s Den roof….you can see the wind came in from the south and pushed it all to the north side. More evidence of the wind’s power is hidden just above this fog line…

The wind was even stronger up there – well over our recorded gusts of 35 mph…it blew nearly all the snow off the upper 100 yards of Engen and Alpine.

We got some new photos to show you the exposed rock and patches of dirt. These rocks are right at the top of Engen.

So while this storm was a howler, unfortunately it didn’t give us what we need to open this weekend. So as we lazily devour our thanksgiving feasts we’ll be lamenting the runs that we can’t ski…but still thankful that we’ve got a decent base to build on.

– April