The past week was quite busy, but I was able to fix my schedule at the last minute to take Friday off and work Saturday instead. This allowed me to take advantage of the few inches that fell on Thursday at Kirkwood. (You can click on the pictures for larger versions, if you want.)
Now, those couple inches fell on top of 7-10 *feet* that piled up from Saturday 
through Wednesday, so I was well positioned to have a great powder day. With all the fresh snow sticking in the trees, no clouds in the sky, and the bright sun high thanks to the late season, the drive up was particularly beautiful. Fortunately the roads were mostly dry as well.
We hit the Wall lift right at 9am and dropped straight into Eagle Bowl underneath
the Cirque. Then it was up lift #2 to go check out the backside of the mountain, where we were met with a portion of the mountain that had seen no tracks that day, and only one or two the day previous.
Pete and I decide that a hike is in order, neither of us having tried this spot before.
About 15 minutes of huffing and puffing get us to the top where we recover for a few minutes and then head down through some fantastically light powder. Pete 
says it was like skiing with warm bath water splashing up and around. A fantastic, fantastic run.
Up chair 4, spying from the lift that 99 steps is virtually untracked, we decide we'll go for another hike. My first 99 
step hike. It's never seemed worth it before, but today it is almost audibly screaming out to be taken advantage of, especially after the joyous hiking experience we just had. This hike turns out to be fairly steep in a few sections,
and certainly more then 99 steps (took us about 3o minutes with a few breaks), but ohhhhh so worth it. I have one of my best rides *ever*, getting to crank some massive carves along an untracked expanse. The snow is lightly wind packed, but not just at the surface, so the board gets to sink in a little while still giving enough support, such that I get the lean forward hand drag carve on my toe side and the flirt with the hip on the slope heelside carve as well. Total zen ride. If I never 
snowboarded again after that ride, I'd be content. But, as luck would have it, I got to continue with a great day. We dropped into Thunder Saddle, right underneath the Cirque (being good boys and not ducking the line like we were originally thinking), continuing to find nice fresh fluffy powder under the blue sky.
We head back over to the backside and enjoy a lift ride up with an interesting semi-retired couple from the Santa Cruz hills. It seems the missus is an artist, and the husband is learning all about Unix by running the web site that showcases her work. You *have* to check this out: www.animalhead.com , no joke. I think I might get the goat for the office.
Anyway, we take the mini hike to get over to Two Man Chute, where we continue scarfing down fresh tracks. Getting tired and needing 
food, we decide to have lunch at Red Cliffs Lodge, taking High Whiskey for, get this, more fresh powder to get there. We sit outside, soaking up the sun, having one of the standard Kirkwood lunches, chili cheese fries and Gatorade. It seems like Red Cliffs serves a larger portion size of the delicacy then the others; I couldn't finish all mine. We had wanted the jambalaya, but the cafe was closed. There was a Subaru ad next to us with a quote something along the lines of "the only way you get fresh powder is to be the first person there".
After lunch we took things a bit slower, hitting Sentinel Bowl, Palisades, a great bump run down Look Out Janek, Saddle Bowl, a little bit of a hike to drop in through one of the Sisters into Sister Chute and then one last easy bump run down Monte Wolfe and into Red Cliffs. These afternoon runs weren't as powderlicious as
the morning, but they were still terrific. They involved Pete's fourth call from the SOC (work), documented here:
and a lift ride with a tele-skiing grandfather who learned to tele four years ago at the young and tender age of 72. We never saw a monoski, but there was a guy attempting to use his split decision on 99 steps with climbing skins and then later as a snowboard. I always thought the contraption was kinda cool, but never quite functional enough. This guy's troubled efforts didn't make me think any different.
Lift lines were almost nonexistent and there was never much of a crowd anywhere we went. I have plans for the next three weekends in a row, so I suspect this was my last powder day (quite possibly my last day period) of the season. What a great way to close it out!
Kirkwood and Mother Nature seem to still be going strong, with another 20-26" falling Sunday and Monday. It has been a banner snowfall year at "The Wood", right now clocking in at 547" - 710" (46 to 59 feet). The average mid-mountain season total for the resort is 500", so this is a heavy year. It is a totally different story up in Washington, where a warm rain spell back in January was followed by an unusual dry stretch. This has pretty much completely trashed the season there. Kirkwood actually hired about a dozen people from Crystal Mountain, which sounds like it has been closed more then it has been open this year. They average 380" a year, so I'm left feeling sad for my Washington coworkers.
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