The picture of the Skyline sign tells the story of the trail condition; light powdery snow on top with the icy remnants of freezing rain beneath.

I broke trail from the top of Booth Hill (that’s just above where trail #30 meets #6) as #30 and Ridge Road had been groomed to some extent. The snow was still falling and formed several inches of powder on top of an icy crust. The crust was annoying in that often it would grip my ski poles forcing me to yank them out. Just as frustrating but somewhat less frequent was the annoyance of the pole tips skittering on the ice crust layer instead of gripping, thus requiring extra attention to firmly and deliberately plant the pole on each stride.

The snow was deep enough on top of the crust to take all the chatter out of the icy surface and give pretty good control. Only once upon trying to side-step up a particularly steep little pitch did I find the snow slip away leaving me rattling on the icy crust beneath.

At the time I skied the light was flat and in addition to that the snow in the air and my personal humidity were causing glasses fog-up so all in all the trail, without any ski tracks to show light and shadow, was precious difficult to read. Luckily my skis were none too fast. I had chosen rock skis which have plenty of gouges out of the base, though I didn’t need to, the snow was plenty deep.

My return descent of Booth Hill was by way of trail #31 which seemed to never have been used by other skiers so was particularly sweet and allowed for a few Telemark turns.