As the snow continued to pick up, conditions improved. The snow crystals were very fine—champagne snow, like Western pow. And it was easily blown around when gusts did pick up. This also meant that conditions were variable—some trails were great, but you could definitely end up with some "dust on crust" conditions where you sunk through the powder and hit the icy patches underneath. As the day went on and the snow picked up, contact with ice became less frequent, and ropes continued to drop around the mountain. We called it around 4pm. The lifts were just ski-on so we made a lot of runs on the first day.
The AZ Summit actually kicked off on Saturday. Overnight, the mountain had picked up an additional 6" of snow, so again in the morning we were raring to go. I [Nick] broke out my powder skis and off we went at 8:30. Some lifts were on wind hold, but for the most part the lifts were running, despite some forecasts having originally called for 50+ mph gusts. Temps were similar to Friday, around zero, making face masks a necessity.