Saturday, the temperature hovered around 30 degrees. There was three feet of powder on the ground. It was the beginning of a three-day weekend. Perfect for skiing!

The Whitetail Ski Resort is just 90 minutes from D.C. and had received good reviews from colleagues. “In the history of Whitetail Resort, the skiing, snowboarding and snow tubing conditions have never been better. We have received over 4 feet of snow in the past week,” its web site gushed. So we headed to Whitetail, just outside of Clear Spring, Pa., and arrived about noon Saturday.

Too bad thousands of other skiers had the same idea. There were only a few parking spaces left, and a sign at the registration window warned there were no rental skis left in sizes 150 or 160 cm. But we found one pair of skis to rent, and the three of us hit the slopes. The conditions were great, the view from the top was lovely, and despite the multitudes on the hills, it wasn’t until late in the day that the intermediate slopes developed icy patches. It wasn’t a big resort, however, and it was pretty much at maximum capacity — and then some. The lift to the easy slopes, even though it was a quad and the workers made sure each chair had four people on it, moved agonizingly slowly…

Whitetail was having its own Big Olympic Games, complete with a giant elevated copper torch at the bottom of the main lifts. The BOG race announcer noted that as it was 50 degrees in Vancouver, we had much better conditions than the Olympians. At home that evening, as we watched the women plowing through slush in the Olympics freestyle mogul competition, we had to agree.

I failed to bring my camera, but other skiers/sliders have posted on Flickr, like these.