New Snow Reported by Resort ? 5 cm
New Snow Observed on Mountain ? approx. 5-7 cm (2-3 inches)
Surface Conditions ? Powder / Chowder
Sky ? light / moderate snow
Temp ? near freezing at the base, upper 20s F at summit
Skiers ? Jay, Dave, Erica, James, Chris, Scott
Runs / Vertical Skied - 8 / 14,910’

 Our friend Scott had arrived from Seattle the previous night, and was raring to go on the slopes of Red.  He is currently shopping around for new skis, and planned to try out some midfats during his stay.  His first choice was to try some Volant Ti Powers, but unfortunately they didn’t have the size he needed.  Therefore he went with some Elan Spitfires in about a 176 cm length.  There had been a couple more inches of snow overnight, which was par for the course and would keep things fresh.
 MY idea was to give Scott a nice warm-up run in the Paradise area on a groomed run or something close to that.  Of course, not long after we began traversing left on Ridge Road, everybody got exited and dove into the trees and fresh snow.  Fortunately, Scott was ready and able to hit the trees, so things went well.  We hung out at Paradise for a bit and scored a few runs in the nice snow.
We returned to the motel for lunch and a bit of drying out.  It’s nice to be able to crash for a bit during lunch and dry things out if needed, but it can be difficult to get rolling again.  We somehow managed to get ourselves moving and headed back up to the summit of granite.  Chris had stayed on the mountain during lunch and visited some of the trails to the skier’s right of the Motherlode.  We took Scott down the steeps off the backside of Ridge Road and the snow was great.  We also took another shot at Cambodia, this time taking a slightly different route, but once again ending up in the trees.  Maybe that’s just the way things go with Cambodia.  Whatever happened, it was a lot of fun and we figured we’d skied enough of the area to chalk up the Cambodia on the "trails to ski before we die" list.  Erica and Chris went in a little early in the afternoon, and Dave James, Scott and I traversed our way into mayhem.  In order to return to the base are from Paradise, it was best to traverse far to the skier’s left.  We did this, and attempted to ski some of the terrain that we had missed to the skier’s right of Motherlode.  None of us are exactly sure where the heck we were, but it was some phat terrain.  As we traversed, James blasted us through some great powder around trees and down steep faces that came out of nowhere.  The obstacles came up so quickly sometimes that I just remember picking the best crash site and that’s it.  Oh the joys of a strange big mountain.  By the end of the day, the wind was really starting to pick up on Granite.  This was something we hadn’t seen much of in our entire trip, and we were hoping it meant something special was brewing J.  The snow just kept pouring down, and we knew that tomorrow had the chance to be the biggest dump of our trip.

On to the pictures!