Yesterday morning, we finally headed back to the ski hill five days after the big storm ended.

While getting the truck loaded up, I noticed this macabre ensemble:

  

According to Ethel, she had opened the door some minutes before this, and a bunch of crows flew off of the roof on the cabin into the trees, and she saw a bunch of feathers fly, but there was no crow on the ground. When I walked out, all that was left was a head and a wing.

When we returned some hours later, the wing was gone - just a head, staring up at us.

It reminds me of some social situations that I've been in.

We did make it to the hill yesterday, and there was some powder left - however, it had been a heavy storm, and it had been five says since the snow had fallen, so the snow was HEAVY. It's been some years since I've made turns in deep powder, and when I made those turns, it was the light, fluffy Utah cold smoke.

I couldn't turn in this stuff.

Well, okay, I could turn, but it was awkward and ungainly and not much fun.

But after a run or two, I realized that I didn't really NEED to turn in this stuff - it was thick enough to slow me down without turning :) The day started looking brighter...

...until I got to the bottom, and saw that the lifts weren't running. Power had cut out.

And Ethel....was stuck on the lift.

It was only a half-hour or so before they cranked up the generators and managed to get folks off of the lift; at that time, we decided to head home rather than take any chances on getting stuck up there again.

Who knows - maybe the next time, she'd get stuck on a chair with some hungry snowboarders - and then I'd be posting pix of an Ethelhead laying in the snow....