Note
The full on blast of winter this past weekend was a severe setback to any notions of an early spring rising. Today things have at least warmed up back out of the single digits, and in the low elevation parts of town (demarcated as the zone where most people can carry out ordinary activities such as affixing stamps to envelopes, looking for the TV remote, and possibly cracking eggs for breakfast without any need for bottled oxygen), which tend to be substantially warmer than the higher, thin air parts town, there is some snow beginning to melt in the streets.
Note
Ski intervals. Trails conditions were excellent, maybe a new best for the year. Ran snow bike trails afterwards, and even with packing by the bike groomer, they were still soft. It was beautiful, with fir boughs all weighted heavily by the recent snow. Occasionally I would get a snow dusting when a branch overhead would manage to shake free of its crystalline white burden.
Saw several groups of bikers struggling in soft drifts; it looked like one group was about to deploy an emergency rescue flare, but what chance would there be of anyone seeing it? It is total desolation up there in the winter. Probably the flare would only have served to attract marauding snow snakes.