Tuesday evening, I ran up the trail about forty minutes and endured plenty of snickers when other hikers caught sight of my skis. But when I dropped down to the creek, I was the one laughing. I was amazed to find the creek completely covered in a solid layer of snow for as far as I could see in both directions! The halfpipe lives!

I quickly put on my skis and skied uphill to the end of the snowfield. Then I turned downhill and ripped up the pipe. It took me about 5 minutes to ski from top to bottom, so I’d guess that the snowfield was somewhere between one kilometer and one mile long.

Incredibly, the skiing was not terrible. It was extremely slow because of the embedded dirt, but it was relatively smooth and solid. Check out the photos.