Wet… that’s it… nothing else.
Okay, maybe we can do a little better than that. Our troop headed up to the White Mountains on Friday night and we had our meal in Payson. Once we got up to the house in Show Low, we had a bit of a wait as the deadbolt lock wasn’t opening for us. After some time, an alternative ingress was found and all got prepared for skiing the next day.
On Saturday morning, we had a quick breakfast of pastries and caravaned up the mountain. On the drive up, as we got near 9,000 feet, we all got excited to see the snow start to fall. Once we got to the resort, we found out a couple of things:
- The falling snow was very wet.
- We were there during the THROWDOWN @ SUNRISE PARK RESORT. What this meant was that DJs would be playing loud music at the bottom of the hill ALL DAY! (our scouts may have enjoyed this more than this reporter).
Regardless of these things, the scouts and adult leaders got their passes and made for the runs. The good news is that after a bit of a rise in elevation on the lifts, the wet snow changed (the music also got a bit more bearable but I digress). The bad news is that it was a bit more like small hail/graupel. A bit of wind and the graupel would sting your face as you’d be going up the hill on the lift. Those that didn’t have masks found that their gloves would provide some level of protection from the abuse.
For lunch, Mr. Parizek did his usual wonder work on the grill with burgers and brats. He even finally had a reason to use the instant canopy as it had now changed to rain down in the parking lot. Many a skier was relieved to see the parking lot food and accommodations.
Some of our troop felt they’d had enough skiing for the day and some felt they weren’t wet enough and went back out for a few runs after lunch. The beatings by the hard snow and the wind had our troop leave a little earlier than when the resort closed for the day.
We retreated back to the house in Show Low wet and tired. Quick showers and a change of clothes were a welcome relief for all. For dinner, Mr. Parizek had a few of the scouts help with making chili, cornbread, salad and pudding. There were some games of hide and seek and cards afterwards.
Sunday, we awoke to snow and not that wet stuff that we had on the slopes. This was the dry snow that dreams are made of! Our scouts had trouble getting ready for our trip back down to the valley as they wanted to have a snowball fight.
I’m sure that many of our scouts would have loved to have spent at least another hour playing in the snow but it was time for us to head back to the warmth of Phoenix. The weather led to a very foggy decent down the rim but all returned to Phoenix relatively intact.
Another fun snow outing albeit a very wet one!