T.S. Eliot starts one of my favorite poems, "The Wasteland," with the line, "April is the cruellest month." But for those of us anxious to tour, November is. Sick of the Alta hamster wheel, I've been venturing out with friends to inspect early season options. With Alta closing today (to uphill), you may be tempted to do the same. If you care about your skis, I have one word for you: Don't. (Ron Howard narrator voice: "That's actually two words.") Friday's storm won't change this. Neither will Monday's. There simply isn't enough snow to comfortably, safely ski much beyond the relatively-rock-free resorts. There's just enough snow to make you think you can take deep turns and then...sparks and core shots fly.

More to the point of avalanche safety, we dug some hand pits (given that we found a settled snow depth of 12" to 18", a hand pit was really all it took) and found some faceting down near the ground (the October snow layer). Very similar to what I've seen in Silver Fork this season.

More perplexing was the 2" wind slab forming inconsistently throughout the drainage. It tended to be in more exposed, east-facing areas, but not completely. This layer will get buried by the incoming storms and, depending on how deeply, it may create a layer that comes back to bite us. Today it just made for annoying skiing. Load it up with a foot of snow, however, and...?

Back to T.S. Eliot. As I skied out this morning, these words kept murmuring in my ears....