The Moulton Journal: "ego snow"

The weather has warmed to normal--this morning it was in the mid-teens: an "extra blue" wax day. I took yesterday off to let a sore shoulder recover a bit, but with a little fresh snow on the trails I could not say "no" again today.

On some days, the snow conditions are such that even a fair skier can execute pretty turns and do about what they want to do. Rick Appleman has named these conditions "ego snow," and today -- at least on the trails -- was a good instantiation of that general concept. Extra blue made for good climbing without herring-boning on all but the steepest section of Yankee Boy. And though it was not an especially fast day, I found it delightful to zoom around the narrow turns on Buzzy without edging to drop a lot of speed.

Someone new is skiing The Moulton, or at least someone with a new set of skis. They are short and fat like tele boards, but whomever was wearing them did a lot of skating. They did not seem to leave the telltale "fishscale" marks of no-wax skis. Could this be something new?

Other than a croaky raven and a solitary moose (ho hum), not many critters were out and about today. Looking down the Deer Lodge valley, it appears we might have some weather moving in. But as Paul Sawyer likes to say, "The best way to prevent a snowstorm is to predict it."