It was an interesting day today at Blue. Went to the bottom to see what was up down there. For some reason, there was nobody manning the lift lines, so a bunch of outlanders made their way right to the pass readers and nobody gave them grief. So once they did, we all did the same.
Lower Paradise had been groomed, so we thought it would be open, but once we got to the top, no dice. It hadn't even been touched by a groomer as of 8am, so down Tut's and over to Main Street, which was nicely groomed and fast.
Made the 6-pack lap again, but took connector over to the park and took a run down Chute. It was quite hard and they didn't push the wells entirely across the trail, keeping a ditch with ice boulders on skier's left.
Another run up the 6-pack around 8:30 or so, saw a groomer heading down Paradise from the top. Perhaps they would open it today? A later ride up around 9 had the grooming fleet behind the tape at the top, just left of the 6-pack and the SP setting up tape to keep skiers off Razor's and Challenge. People were wanting to go down Paradise, but SP wouldn't open it for another half-hour, so we went on our merry way.
Crowds were surprisingly light early on. Thought there'd be more out, but I guess not as many had off today. This made lapping the mountain easy until about 10, when crowds starting appearing. Main Street from Midway on down started to look like an ant hill. This made for some interesting spectating from across Chute. Lots of collisions, people skiing right off the sides of Chute and Main Street. One really odd sight was a group of 4 ski instructors skiing down Chute backwards, in a reverse stem christie sort of way At one point the last instructor bit it and was fighting to get his skis back on. Very bizarre.
Back up the 6-pack around 9:45 and Paradise was now open. Took a run down and it was all marbles. Guess they wanted all the grooming they did to re-freeze. Took a run down it later, around noon or so and the middle had broken up a bit, but the sides were still rollers, as expected. The lower part, just after the last sharp left turn had quite a bit of natural snow on skier's right, which made for some pleasant sliding to get away from the marbles. Now that people are on it and the groomers can get a few more goes at it, the surface should be good.
They were still blowing full out on Razor's, Lower Sidewinder and Falls. Nothing going on Dream Weaver, Challenge, Sidewinder, Switchback, Window Maker (even though it was open) or Burma. There also were no features in the lower terrain park.
