Snow: It's time to make a graceful exit

Its the third of April and we still have snow in Minneapolis. Not enough to cross country ski on, although that was not the case on Monday, as one of my associates trying to get here from Indiana can attest.


There is debate on how many words the Inuit-Aleut languages have for snow. We denizens of the Great Lakes snow belt have plenty of snow terms ourselves. The stuff that we got Monday was heavy, wet 'mashed potatoes' snow thats hard to drive your skis through. Sunday at Spirit Mountain gave us 'sugar' snow, a fine grained wet snow, as well as some 'corn' snow which is snow that has been frozen, thawed, and busted up a number of times. When we were out west we encountered wind blown 'grabby' snow, which caused a spectacular face plant by GalwayGuy. JeremiahJohnstone has the video but so far has not released it. We did not encounter much of the lusted after 'champagne powder' but did ski a lot of 'packed powder', a bit of 'crust' snow, and a little 'ice' over the course of the trip.

So whats the point of all of this? This is the absolutley last reference to snow that you'll hear in this blog until November. Although I will have one more ski day when I'm working in Colorado next week, I'm done. Sick of it. Want it to melt and go away and fill the lake back up. We hope to paddle in the river somewhere this weekend and once my hull hits the water thoughts of skiing and snowshoeing will be banished from my brain for the season. The beauty of living up north is that they will come seductively creeping back into my head sometime around October but for now its big swells, high braces, and breaking waves that dominate my daydreams.