Nasty but Nice

The title of this post refers to the weather in Kodiak of late. Last Thursday we finally made it to the 100 inch snow total for the whole winter out at the airport. We had been stuck at 98.3 inches total for what seemed like forever. And then in two days we got 7 inches. But since yesterday evening its been all rain in town and at the airport. But this is good up on the mountain where it has been all snow - do you get the 'nasty but nice' thing now?

This is a picture I took today while skiing on Pyramid, and it really does not do the storm justice. You can't tell that it is blowing 40 and the snow crystals feel a sandblaster pointed at my face. But it does give the sense of what skiing in a partial whiteout is like. Up higher on the mountain I bagged taking more photos because it was a complete whiteout. You'd see a rock or some other such black object and just gravitate towards it because it is the only thing you could see. I figure the audience of this web site does not deserve the visual of a black dot in a complete field of white.

In the last 2 days over 2 feet of snow have fallen on Pyramid and probably over 8 feet in April alone. It's getting weird up there - no alders showing and small trees completely buried. Huge drifts and cornices where I have never seen them before. The weirdest thing is that up above 2000 feet we actually have relatively little snow because all our storms have been on the cool side and the snow has all blown away up high. But between 500 and 1500 feet it is epic. PGS