It was a bizarre day in the Wasatch. It started with talking our way through two police roadblocks in BCC where congestion in the upper canyon caused the closure of the canyon, but they allowed us to go up as far as Mineral Fork, so that's where we went skiing. The next bizarre thing was the snow. Probably a couple of feet of storm snow on Thursday and Friday with warming temperatures throughout the storm and lots of wind must have been followed by riming and eventually freezing rain, with a final topping of graupel. The rain crust was 1-2 inches thick and was completely supportable. On top of the rain crust was 1-2" of mostly graupel and other heavily rimed snow. A hasty pit revealed about 3' of very uniform and consolidated storm snow beneath the rain crust with no sign of the low density snow from last Monday, although perhaps we just didn't dig far enough. The new snow and the wind obliterated all small features in the snow surface, it was like nature's snowcat had smoothed the landscape. The graupel on top bonded to the crust well and was just deep enough to provide good skiing with just a little scraping sound at the end of your turns. The lower angle was much better than the steeper terrain. Even on the steep, we never broke through the crust. The final bizarre feature was a veritable snow pit at the bottom of the run, dug by a predator seeking a meal. The bloody snow at the bottom of the pit (4' deep) and animal remains tell the story (see picture below).