A beautiful ski but not entirely the one I intended. Sometimes you have to change plans on the fly. Skied up out of P12 with thoughts of backcountry powder in my head. Someone had reported that little freezing rain hit the park last week but I can confirm it not to be true. Like Don, I tried to ski the first backcountry trail I came to. On trail 38 I found a few cm's of powder over a thin crust. I slowly persisted over to the snowshoe trail but it was a slow humbling exercise and I knew my day on the small trails was done.

The groomed trails were awesome though so I changed my plan and skied out to the firetower on excellent tracks with a light snow falling. The trail was pretty quiet as it was late in the day but I still crossed paths with a few other happy skiers. Returning to descend down 2 I tried a short detour on 21 but had the same experience of a thin breakable crust. Maybe tomorrow's big storm will improve the backcountry... but for now the groomed trails are where it's at.