Royal Mountain Conditions

[mel]

Royal was skiing like a Perfect mid-winter day, packed powder conditions and a nice snow squall passed thru about noon dropping a big fat inch or more of new snow.. Today will be another great day.

 

[Jim]

And yes, another really nice day, continuing the great early season run. I was only there for a little while early afternoon. All of my runs were good ones. I was warned away from Challenge by my daughter and I'm happy to wait for it to have better cover before I start taking it this season. I also took a look at Doc's Drop and decided it would not be fun today. I started to venture a bit more into the sides of the trails but decided I'm not quite ready for really getting into the woods this season yet. I got some really positive reports about the conditions in the woods from others, though.

 

[mel]

Royal today was like mid winter, and more skiing in the snow globe, not to crowded, great job by the Mt crew.

 

[Jim]

Royal weathered the unfortunate events of Friday pretty well and was ready to go as usual today with everything except Upper Red Carpet available. There's still decent cover in the trees and all glades were marked as "Enter at Your Own Risk" but it couldn't have been great and I barely saw anyone going in. Overall it was a pretty quiet day. The main runs were groomed out with a pretty good surface. Royal was nice early but got a little chunky in a few usual spots. I still avoided Challenge which looked a little thin and slick from the lift, Doc's which was still skied off from last weekend, and the T-Bar line. It was the first day skiing with the knee brace that I feel like I was skiing more or less normally and was confident enough to let the skis go and get some more speed. Felt good!

 

[mel]

Royal was excellent today. And the lower pond is almost full, upper getting full. Jake said he's got enough water to finish the Challenge and hopefully the Red carpet..his depth meter shows 27" average base! More snow coming the rest of the week, should be a great 2wks of skiing

 

[Jim]

Back at it today for the first time since Saturday. A little fresh snow everywhere and a lot more snowmaking on Challenge has us back to packed powder on all the main trails. I made two Knight-to-Royal tours including Challenge. The only regular trails not open were Upper Red Carpet and the T-Bar Line.

It's a short day tomorrow, open 9-1 for Christmas Eve. I plan to be there. $40 tickets. Should be great snow again.

 

[Jim]

The half day was nice today. Last night's weather ended up being a mixed bag that ended as a coating of wet snow. It was more of a loose and frozen granular surface today and again still good and you could get an edge pretty much everywhere. It was surprisingly busy. With only the Hadley lift running to the top, wait times probably pushed 5 or 6 minutes for a while. I don't recall recent Christmas Eve half days being anywhere near this busy. Again I stayed on the main trails but my daughter and her ski team friends (and a lot more people in general) were all over in the woods today, which she described as "ok but not great". I'll hold out for "great".