There's still plenty of snow on the Mesa, but unfortunately it's covered in desert dust and that makes for lousy crust skiing. What a shame! What had been shaping up to be a fantastic crust season turned into a pretty marginal one.
The Washington Post, of all places, has an excellent article about a problem that could get worse.
Dave Buchanan writes in the Sentinel, "High winds lifting dust from the red-rock canyon country of eastern Utah and dropping that load on the Colorado mountains occurred at least 12 times this spring, according to a report issued by Chris Landry, director of the Silverton-based Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies."
A Greenwire report quotes Tom Painter, director of the Snow Optics Laboratory at the University of Utah and a leading expert on snowmelt, saying, "Already we have more than doubled the amount of dust we've typically observed during the last six years."
Let's hope this isn't a sign of things to come!
Enjoy your summer and keep your browser pointed here for updates on all things related to xc skiing.
--Christie
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