What a Difference a Week Can Make

After about 40 days without snow, winter finally returned to southern Utah. Starting Thursday night, a number of small bursts came through, adding up, by Saturday morning, to a solid ten inches on the forest. You can see from the picture that it was nearly enough snow to stick the Chev when I tried to turn around in Center Creek. The really big news, though, is that the dump allowed me to re-start my Olympic ski training program. There was enough snow of the right consistency for me to put in my first laps since Christmas Eve. I broke trail in the lower meadow, starting from where the truck was, well, parked, and made a .45 mile loop in 10:38. The second lap came in at around 9:00; the third was about 8:00, and the fourth was 7:10. It is actually a really nice track and, as it solidifies, I should be able to get my times down into the five minute range. But, what we need now is more snow. I don't mind re-packing the track every week, but if we get a bunch of sun, we'll be right back down to the grass.