It is a good time to stay within the boundaries of a ski resort.

 Groomers are not our friends on a powder day...

This is the newest snow product I've seen recently - not so new, snowskating- rode up with a guy whose girlfriend is a professional snow skater.  She's Randi Rettke for Pioneer and she placed first in a huge race in Tahoe earlier this month.  I hope to be seeing her win gold in the Olympics.  

For more on this sport, here is a good  blog I'm going to follow.

Poaching the line is a "dead end" - literally

What's really a sad and discouraging event is all the riders/skiers ducking (crossing a closed boundary) the rope lines on top of Elevator Shaft today.  Very disheartening to witness as the avy risk was quite high with the deep snow depth and wind slab.  Besides there was plenty of good lines inbounds.  We didn't quite need a regulator like this guy did at Crystal, but it was pretty darn good for snorkeling.

I would like to ask Boyne to put some additional effort into enforcement - that is an effort to pay people to catch these folks and pull some tickets.  At least make examples of a few people so the rope lines are taken seriously.  It's actually a $1,000 fine and a person is guilty of a misdemeanor if the person knowingly skis in an area or on a ski trail, owned or controlled by a ski area operator, that is closed to the public and that has signs posted indicating the closure.  Maybe a lot of skiers don't know that or maybe they just don't care when there is two feet of powder and they can feel like they're in a Warren Miller or Teton Films movie.  It's what the day felt like all day inbounds!

Maybe what is happening is that people (locals) are very comfortable with the terrain, have no or a disrespect for avalanche education and figure that they've gotten away with it before.  A lot of people probably just don't want to be told what to do.  But on a day like today or the warming days predicted to be coming up, it's going to be a very high risk poaching the closed lines.

Personally, if I was the snow queen to make all these important decisions I'd fine them (money to go to avalanche education training scholarships), give them a misdemeanor AND I'd also ask them sit through avalanche education classes in order to get their passes back.  Perhaps with more education they would realize that the pro patrol has the areas CLOSED for a reason.

The end of the day for a ski bum - lucky dogs