sibhusky

I'm meeting up with a Camelback skier on Thursday.

Day 46. Another bluebird day.

Day 45. Glorious day, cold, no liftlines, like we'd stepped back in time.

Day 44. Ankle deep to boot cuff height freshies on the back.

Day 43

Day 42

Day 40. Fresh snow, but cold. -16° F wind chill.

Day 39. Mixed bag, weatherwise, but good visibility and fewer people. Sun, clouds, wind, graupel.

Day 38. Pretty socked-in, but got to ski with Siblet. Good fun even if it was a Saturday.

Day 35. More crowded than yesterday, probably because it was warmer. Yesterday

Great cold bluebird day today. No color tweaks.

Day 31 had the kind of fresh snow that packs into jouncy bouncy bumps quickly. Wore me out and I'm taking 2 days off

Day 30. Super Bowl Sunday, and everyone left at noon.

Day 29. Continuing to get snow. Things are much improved. Most of the ice is sufficiently covered.

Winter is back, thank God.

Spring skiing in February

Only if it was this bad. A full week of this last week.

More freshies today. Too bad there were an aggravating number of lift problems.

Freshies on Wednesday. (Not me)

It's been pretty nippy lately, to the extent that most lifts haven't been running due to wind chills in the -50° to -60° range. Finally opened the upper lifts today (0°, little wind). Might have been the best day so far this season.

So, in a lousy snow year, with lift issues all season, they managed to set a new visit record, cracking 1/2 million.😟 https://flatheadbeacon.com/2023/04/13/another-banner-year-on-big-mountain

Theoretically. They have an agreement with the Forest Service with a firm close date. So they can't go around making last minute changes because they just got a foot of snow (last year, not this year). However, for some weird reason (Utah? Tahoe?), visitors were way off the January and February numbers in March. I think maybe people booking for March are watching the early season numbers before booking. Which makes total sense. I swore last year in Lech I'd never ever travel for skiing in March, it's too unpredictable. Anyway, by the 3rd week of March, it was approaching ghost town status. Part of that might be the snow. We had an abysmal year in terms of snowfall, even though what we got held up well because of so many really frigid days. So, they wouldn't have even wanted to stay open, bears or no bears. (It was in fact empty enough on Gray Wolf that I was actively looking for bears on it. Bears have even been IN TOWN for weeks.) Hellroaring Basin always closes April 1 because of grizzly dens near the creek area down low. But, people stop coming and I am sure that is the main reason no matter what they claim. They also say they need to give employees a "release date" and that they can't react due to that. And maybe that's also a factor because a lot of the long time local employees do construction in the summer as it's the natural seasonal shift. They will all be eager to go to their much higher-paying construction jobs. And the kids from South America will have airplane tickets already bought. Whitefish Mountain Resort also has a huge summer business they need to prep for. Believe it or not, they actually have had to bulldoze snow out of the way some years to prep the mountain biking trails. So "grizzlies"? One factor. It sounds cool. (Not saying there aren't any, hell, I know personally they are in the area. I just think that BUSINESS reasons are the bigger factor.)

Day 43. Closing day.