The Great State of Uller

We ski-tracked the connector from Hoyt to Pence this morning.  The winds of yesterday and Sunday’s storm buried all traces of track and base, so we reverted to ‘old school’ maintenance techniques. 

Monday’s warm and yesterday’s wind turned the surface snow into fine grain crystals, a little finer than sugar.  Those conditions also produced a 1/2”(1cm) crust on top of everything.  It was fun doing it the old way although our synthetic over-boots got chewed up some more and will never be the same.  Purple hard wax worked; but things are on the edge of klister if you are a waxer, so be prepared.

The word klister brings us to a new set of objectives for Uller.  It’s just not efficient or safe to try to keep groomed tracks on Uller as we approach spring.  Grooming has to be done when the temperatures are below freezing; which is primarily at night.  We’ve spent a lot of nights on Uller; but user numbers just don’t justify that kind of exposure. A track will last about a day on Uller and then either deteriorate or turn to ice.  We don’t want any skiers on Uller on those conditions.

So, Uller has transitioned to ‘back-country’ status for the foreseeable future.  There will be no tracks.  The base is bomb-proof until we get our third day in the 50º’s; but skiers will be making their own tracks or following other ski-tracks.  Of course, the trail is a wonderful, 2.5m wide snowshoer’s dream at this time.

There are options: if we get a week or so of cold, with or without new snow, we might find the temperature window to go out and flat groom (no tracks). If that happens, a very rare and exciting situation occurs. Uller could be skied freestyle!  It’s only happened a few times over the last 5 decades; but it’s a transcendental experience.

We’ll keep ski-tracking the new connector because of the open kilometer and it’s tendency to drift over; but now we all get to experience Uller in a completely new way.

By the way, on this morning’s ski we noticed the Red Maples just breaking bud dormancy and a pair of otters tobogganed along the west crossing of the S fork of Alder Ck.  

The world is heading for a solstice... Ski Freely!  Z