Continuing my cross country trek I stopped in Eden UT to visit old friends and ski powder mountain with them.  Joe has trained an avalanche rescue and SAR dog.  He had not exercised for the previous warm days and was champing at the bit.  We skied blue runs with the dog, named Gunny, and he kept a very respectable pace.  After Gunny got his exercise he was put in a patrol shack for a while and joe and I and 3 of his friends skied together.  Joe pointed out the debris from 2 in bounds avalanches that occurred recently with nobody hurt.  It has been a very bad year for avalanches all over the west.  (It is always a bad year.).  2 more big slides crossed the access road last week, one burying it 20 feet deep.  

The skiing was quite good, far surpassing my expectations after several days in a row of never going below freezing.  We ducked into a few swaths of trees between trails and found powder of a sort although it was very stiff powder.  This doesn't happen on the east coast but in the dry air of the mid continent and inter mountain west it is fairly common for some powder to survive warm days.  Groomed single black runs skied very well but were highly altitude dependent, like velvet for the first 500 vert., then transitioning in the next 500 and not so good for the bottom 500.  While enjoying this we noticed increasingly menacing clouds building up to the north.  Suddenly a violent squall hit us first with graupel, then snow driven by 60-70 mph winds.  Then joe got a lightning warning on the patrol radio.  2 lifts went on wind hold and a third one had a cable jump a guide wheel.  We got to the top just before they shut our lift down.  Snowcats and pisten bullies were sent to rescue skiers stranded at the bottom.  Powmow is an upside down resort.  Nobody was hurt and nobody needed rescue from the chairs.  We called it a day at 12:30.  "A mountain is a high place that makes its own weather." - Edward Abbey.

 2 more big slides crossed the access road last week, one burying it 20 feet deep.  

Whoa!