Huron lookout
Originally uploaded by kenmore_photos.

I went up to the Park today with the intent to head out to the firetower. We got some snow last night - about an inch - and Lafleur had done their usual expert job grooming the Parkways but they didn't go out the trails so I had to reconsider. I skiied beyond the lookouts for a ways but decided the new snow was really only effective at hiding rocks and gravel where the base snow has melted through. I had my rock skiis on but there are limits to how much gravel sliding I will do. Instead I came back to the carefully groomed parkway and skied up to Black's before turning back to P10. The Parkways looked to be in midwinter form but the icy base(which is none too thick) was just beneath the new layer of snow.

When I started my ski the trees were all covered in the fresh powder like a nice coating of white icing but by the time I returned the temperatures had climbed above zero and the icing had mostly fallen off. One nice view I had at Huron lookout (pictured here) was some thermal stratification (of sorts) with layers of cloud on the valley floor and high above me while a nice clear layer of sky was open at my level. Further on at Champlain the clouds were spilling over the escarpment down into the valley. For the most part the high level clouds stayed with me so no sunny skies today. Tomorrow it will rain and the rest of the week will be quite warm. I'm pretty sure this will be the last weekend of skiing.