Snow at night and sun in the morning

Press, 22 August 1978, Page 12

Snow at night and sun in the morning

Bv

PETER LAWLOR

There is one thing that most skiers crave besides loads of snow, and that is large quantities of sunshine. Obviously you can’t have them both arriving at the same time, but some mountains have snow at night and sun in the morning—fabled places. At Sun Valley, Idaho, where I have worked, the brochures have never shown a snowfall, just tanned skiers skiiing or

basking. The Sun Valley publicity department, one of the smartest in the country, were careful about this. The Learn to Ski Week trains came all the way from Los Angeles smog 800 miles away. We took our pale pupils out of the carriages, gave them their snow legs and sent them back at the end of the week as bronzed gods. Let the toughies go to places like Alta, Utah, with their boast of the deepest powder—up to 150 in. For myself I’d rather teach on less snow—only 36in average depth at Sun Valley. I think that perhaps an instructor can suffer more than his pupils when it is bad weather. At least the pupil has the novelty of it even in a snow storm and can quit after the morning session. An intructor has to carry on. In the west coast of the United States at places like Squaw Valley we used to put up with a bit of dismal weather from the storms

that swept in from Hawaii knowing that one from Alaska would come in later from the north and give us crisp snow and sun following. In the Pacific north-west, around Seattle, the ski resorts can get socked in for weeks because storms per-

sist much longer than in California.

Actually I have found that the most pleasant spot for sunshine is New Mexico. It sounds like desert but the mountain areas have quite a long season — five months with an average depth of 55in of snow.

The last season there — from December to April—• we lost only one day of skiing due to bad weather: a sudden afternoon snow shower with thunder and lightning.

The sparks were running down the cables. The lift operators said we couldn’t get electrocuted because it was all grounded. I don’t understand the principle, nor did anyone else, so we all quit. Apart from that we had sun nearly every day, just like the brochure. A peculiar condition exists there in the local Sangre de Christo mountains, where snow from the surrounding desert evaporating during the day can

create a local snow storm that dumps several inches on the mountains at night. I have enjoyed the pockets of particularly good weather that I have had on roaming the South Island here. The North Island may give the best spring snow; it often falls “pre-packed,”

you might say, so that there is less need for groomers to get out and iron it smooth.

Tekapo and Queenstown, well in from the coast and ringed in by the alps, get the gentler storms that let the sun through quickly afterwards. They are more protected, like Sun Valley. Some skiers swear that Tekapo gives you lots of sun. The terrain does seem to have some advantages in having a very open valley. I certainly got a tan there and never lost sight of Mount Cook, the distant barrier to the nor-west storms.

The snotv had the nice crisp sugary feeling that typifies South Island areas. This sugary texture is different from the powder we call “duck feathers” in the well - inland rocky mountain area of the United States. The stuff there falls dehydrated, light enough that even waist high one scarcely feels it.

I had quite forgotten the sugary resistance of fresh New Zealand snow and had quite a time handling it again. The snow is seldom groomed right after a fall in the powder areas of the United States. It is skied for a day before the machine goes over. it. I have seen the groomers on the virgin slopes here before the tracks are made by skiers. For family skiing sun is important. I think parents would agree that it is hard to keep the kids interested when their hands get cold, and when they can’t see

when it’s snowing. When the sun is gone the only thing is to bundle the youngsters up inside the lodge and give them a dollar to spend. Meanwhile mum and dad go out and get the value for their ski-lift ticket in spite of foggy goggles and blowing snow. We might study the small print in ski folders and check the figures of winter sunshine before setting off on an expensive, family ski trip. And change car stickers from “Think Snow” to something about the sun.