Good Snow

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Last week when I was driving AZ home, I pointed at the dirty grey snowbanks (or perhaps icebanks) and told him I thought we needed some new snow. He agreed and on Monday we got it. It was the reverse of our usual storms here in Halifax, where we often start with a good fall of small dry snow with wind out of the northeast and end up catching the back side of the system where the winds come round to the southeast, milder air is pulled in, and the snowfall changes to rain. It can be quite a mess and there’s often little chance for skiing. This one started Monday afternoon with nice little cold snowflakes, but it changed quickly to wet snow mixed with rain, so I went to bed without much hope. However, the norwester that often follows these storms blew in and small dry snow kept falling through the night, so that Tuesday morning brought us a lovely little winter wonderland.

A nice thing about not working fulltime is the opportunity to grab a good snowfall when it happens here, because quality snow like this doesn’t often last. So Tuesday morning we got our ski boots out of the basement, found the gaiters, waxed the skis, loaded the car, and headed for Crystal Crescent Beach.

Here’s what I call quality snow. It’s bright and white and cold and dry. It forms little curls and crumbles at the edges of the skis’ tracks. It makes blue shadows and shines with tiny sparkles in the sun. It swishes under your skis and falls in small clumps off your poles behind each push along the trail.

Quality snow shows where a large hare jumped a metre and a half across the trail. It lies on the needles of the balsam firs, just like in the amazing pencil drawing Harry did. It tracks the movements of deer mice from one clump of grass to another. And it falls off the seed clumps in the alder bushes when the chickadees flit and fly through there.

It is the snow that must have made people look for smooth boards to strap onto their feet to glide on. It is the snow your ski grips when you get a good Nordic stride going and the snow you fly through on the small downhill runs, keeping your balance as you remember the feel of step turns. And it is the snow that took us out the trail to the beach where we watched the leftover storm waves crashing in the sunshine on Tuesday.

It has been a remarkably good week for snow for Halifax. More fell on Wednesday, and we had bright sun and blue skies the rest of the week with temperatures nowhere near the melting point. So Thursday and Friday were more great skiing days, and today we went coasting with the girls, sliding down a short steep slope in an old quarry and landing with red cheeks and snow in our faces.

There’s rain forecast for Monday, so all we can count on right now is one more day of good snow and one more day on our skis until the next stretch of great winter weather arrives (we hope!).