It’s snowing in April and I’m torn between joy and sadness.
Well, for one thing, it’s snowing in April and anyone who knows me at all will tell you that I love to ski, and with this snow I’ll be skiing well into August. But at the same time… well, honestly, I know spring quarter only just now started, but I am so ready for summer.
Skiing has been great. I’ve had powder days all the way into April and I can’t even describe how awesome it is to have the snowpack in this condition. Washington has been having one of the best snow packs in the country this whole season. At Crystal Mountain, the snowpack is at eighteen feet. Eighteen feet! In Colorado, at the most famous ski resorts in the country, the ski pack is barely forty inches. They’ve been having a horrible season, but still… we’re more than ten times that amount.
Just last week, in fact, I scored a great, three feet of snow powder day and skied like crazy in sunny conditions all day. It was awesome!
But honestly, I’m just about ready to start spring skiing – we’re only a month into spring, anyway. Spring skiing is fast and furious and super super fun, and I am ready for it! It’s the laid-back kind of skiing that I can do with my friends who don’t have proper avalanche training.
And beyond spring skiing, there’s summer skiing. This only ever happens when we have a La Nina season – basically when we have a cold summer and a reasonable winter in the cities but insane storm fronts in the mountains (like this year) – and we get dumped with snow. During the months of February and March, we have to get huge amounts of snowfall in order to achieve a solid enough snowpack to ski into summer. And guess what, folks? This year we’ve got it!
Last year the snowpack was at 15 feet and I skied until the end of July. This year it’s 18 feet and the forecast is for skiing into mid-August.
Let me explain what’s so much fun about summer skiing: It’s my favorite sport, but in 70 degree weather. The snow is fast, the sun is shining, it’s nothing but lapping the easy runs… and my favorite part? I get to dress up!
That might seem a little eccentric, but it’s incredibly fun. I was on KOMO 4 news last summer for skiing in my bikini all day. I also skied another day in a complete Renaissance costume and was classified by the ski patrol as “the strangest thing they’d seen all day.” Another guy was skiing in a Batman speedo. It’s the time to ski and show your crazy side!
But skiing isn’t the only thing I do in summer, believe it or not. I’m a senior and transferring to WSU in the fall, so this is my summer to do everything! I need the weather to be good, and honestly, I’m ready for it to start warming up, for the sun to start shining consistently, and to be able to put away my heavy down jackets. I have plans for this summer – my epic Greatest Water Parks of the Northwest road trip tour – and I really need it to be sunny!
Yeah, it’s April and still snowing… I can appreciate it in the moment, but right now, I’m getting over winter and moving on to spring.