New Snow Reported by Resort - 1cm
New Snow Observed on Mountain - 1-2 cm
Surface Conditions - Powder / Chowder
Sky - light snow
Temp - near freezing at base, upper 20s F at summit
Skiers - Jay, Dave, Erica, Chris, James, Greg
Runs / Vertical Skied - 11 / 20,310'

 Red Mountain is currently composed of two main peaks, Red Mountain and Granite Mountain.  Red Mountain is the smaller of the two: base elevation 3788 ft, summit elevation 5208 ft, vertical drop 1420 feet.  Next to Red is Granite, which is substantially bigger: base elevation 3788 ft, summit elevation 6688 feet, vertical drop 2900 feet.  The mountain is great for non-stop consistent steep skiing.  If I had to peg Red Mountain's strengths, I'd put them as trees and steeps.  It is not famous for its snowfall; in fact it is only about 300 inches annually.  I've also heard that due to its low elevation, it can also receive rain at times.  The mountain only has five lifts, and none are high speed.  None of them are even quads.  Breaking these lifts down, it basically comes down to three regions served, two on Granite and one on Red.
 Our first day on the mountain started off with a good omen, new snow and still snowing.  The light snow from the evening had accumulated to 1-2 cm as mentioned in the morning snow report, but it was still coming down.  This was on top of the foot of snow that they had received the day before we arrived.  We (E, James, Dave, J.Spin, and Chris) met up with Greg at the base lodge, and while he grabbed a bite to eat, we took our first run.  We took the Silverlode triple chair up.  It services the first 500 vertical feet of Granite, elevations of 3788 to 4288 feet.  The snow wasn't all that great actually.  It was fairly wet and heavy, and there was a bit of light crust around in the ungroomed runs.  The groomed surface was not too bad, but venturing off onto the sides, even with our midfats meant working hard to make turns.  We were disappointed, but Greg (who had skied the day before) warned us that the bottom third of the mountain was not representative of the great snow that existed up top.  We loaded on the Silverlode chair again, then connected up to the Motherlode triple chair that served the rest of the vertical on Granite (4288 to 6688 feet; 2400 vertical).  The terrain here was, to put it simply, steep.  The lift just kept going, and going, and banks of clouds and light snow hid the summit from our view.  Finally we got off, and headed out into the much drier snow.  We basically headed down the lift line area (Link's Run) and found great chopped up powder.  Greg had mentioned that there was a bunch of snow the night before last, so even though there was only about an inch of new on this day, much of the surface was deep and soft.  Even this light stuff was about 10% H2O, but it was light enough to make the powder skiing fun.  The 2400 vertical foot ride below the lift offers some fun steep terrain, with a groomed route down the center and ungroomed all around.  Each turn reveals new obstacles, and in our case great snow.  There's really nothing like those first turns at a ski area when you have no idea what to expect of the terrain.
We then met up with Greg and headed out to some steep woods near one of the "slide" trails.  He pointed out a trail called "Short Squaw" that he said we should save until we were really warmed up.  We eventually headed over to an area called Paradise, which has its own lift.  There's not a lot of steep terrain in the Paradise area, but this area is like a huge tree-filled playground.  We ventured outside the ski area boundary a bit to get some fresh tracks, making sure to stay close to the rope since we didn't want to end up lost somewhere in the Kootenay wilderness.  The Paradise area offered up the lightest snow since it serviced just the top (5300-6600 feet) of the mountain (1300 vertical). Another high point was when we hit the trail called Short Squaw.  This was quite steep, much like a lift serviced Tuckerman Ravine.  It started out with steep trees then opened into a STEEP snowfield, before finishing with a mellow tree-filled terrain park.  I guessed that the steep sections had to be close to 40 degrees at some points.  To confirm this, I did the pole trick that I learned from skiVT-L where you put one pole perfectly vertical, and one pole horizontal to get an idea of the slope.  When I lined up my two poles in this manner (48 inches) there was about 6 inches extra space in the horizontal pole.  So this would suggest a rise of 48 inches over a run of 54 inches for a percent grade of approximately 88.9% and a slope angle of approximately 41 degrees.  That’s not too bad for lift-serviced steeps.  After the steeps, Short Squaw mellowed to a blue / green pitch with lots of trees.  Finally, it dropped onto the Long Squaw trail, the main traverse that brought you back to the bottom of the Motherlode Lift.

On to the pictures!