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2006-04-17 05:54:47.000 – Ryan Knapp,  Observer

Shoveling the front door…

Yesterday’s weather made it feel more like Christmas than Easter. When I came up to the summit on Wednesday, the summit was in the 40s. We were enjoying the nice spring weather on Friday by going out and skiing and hiking. There was so much snow melting while I was hiking down to Lionshead that it sounded like I was hiking down next to a bubbling brook. Hiking back across to the Alpine Garden, I was walking on mud more than snow.

Saturday rolled in with a wide variety of weather that kept us busy keeping track of them. Here is a list of what we received: drizzle, rain, small hail, freezing rain, freezing drizzle, snow grains, and ice pellets. The ground on the summit went from dirt and slush in the morning, to ice in the afternoon, topped off with a few new inches of snow overnight into Sunday. So far…4.6 new inches from this late storm! And with a nice smooth surface of ice for the snow to slide on, the snow has been blowing nice dunes of snow all over the summit.

The front entrance is a common location for the formation of snow drifts and is a location that constantly needs to be shoveled so it can be used as a fire exit. So Jim, Brian, and myself decided to shovel it in the afternoon to lower the amount that was there in the morning. The snow that we were shoveling was so dense that it came apart in blocks instead of loose powder. It was cleared out at 5 pm and two hours later, our efforts had been blown back in. We lost that battle but we will be back out there in the morning to attack it again.

Ryan Knapp,  Observer