Yesterday was foggy and wet - the snow was soft but the air was chilly at the Callaghan Valley venue, and I had what must be my last on-snow ski of the season on the Olympic trails. Today and tomorrow are downright summery - sunny and hot. Not warm; hot. Saturday Gunnar and I will fly back East for a couple of weeks to visit family and friends.

Graham Nishikawa and Madeleine Williams have come out for a little Spring on-snow trip, and to work on evaluating Madeleine’s fleet of skis. I enlisted those guys, along with the usual suspects (Chris, Amy and Stacey) to help with one more day of testing the fleet of Peltonens that our friends at Alpina had shipped over from Finland. I’m doing this because I’m interested, and as a favor to my friends at Alpina who have been extremely supportive for as long as I’ve been involved in the sport, and especially supportive of Amy’s training center program. Graham and Madeleine were helping out because I told them they had to - not because they’re dissatisfied with their existing equipment arrangements. Still, Madeleine felt that we should probably get a picture of her holding a Fischer. Fair enough!

It’s been an amazing season here, and it’s mind-boggling to me how long it has lasted and how good the skiing has been. Now we’ve got Spring advancing quickly. It’s just over a month to the Summer Solstice and already the days are feeling amazingly long - it didn’t get dark until nearly 10PM last night. The bears are out in force - we saw three black bears by the side of the road on the drive to and from skiing yesterday. They’re easy to spot because there are always cars stopped by the side of the road with people taking pictures and trying to get eaten. I picked up Gunnar on a bike yesterday afternoon and we rode home on a trail near the estuary. When we got home Amy said, “oh, by the way, don’t go down near the estuary because there’s a Grizzly hanging out down there.” Ummm, OK.

So, it’s just after 10Am and the temperature outside has already climbed above 20C and I’m planning a bike ride. I’m not sure how much more I’ll have to write about as part of this season - starting now we’re looking ahead to next year. Amy’s got an on-snow camp scheduled for the first week of June up at the Callaghan Country Lodge (up the valley from the venue where they skied on July 28th last year). But we’ll file that under “summer skiing”.