Blue Jay Day

Yesterday, I sent out an email to some childhood friends that included a link to the Beatles song "Blue Jay Way" along with a photo of me hiking at Ousel Falls on New Year's Day.

As suits my odd sense of humor, I tied the song to the photo by saying that a sunny day in ski country is called a Blue Jay Day.

Actually, the term is Bluebird Day (as in the song by Wings, though I don't think the phrase had its origin in that song either).

In any case, when I got off the Ramcharger 8 Lift and looked out, I found that indeed there was a "fog upon L.A."  Well, not L.A. but above the lower part of the mountain where the Southern Comfort Lift sends skiers up from the other side of the mountain.

I found that to be odd enough synchronicity that I thought I would share it now, rather than piling it into an overly long post later.

In looking at my photos, I notice that in the first few those clouds are so dense that it is impossible to tell that they are clouds rather than simply a blanket of snow, unless you have been to that same spot on a clear day.  

However, despite the clouds looking so thick, skiing down most of the time seemed sunny.  At a certain point, there was low sunshine from the south as I skied under the cloud cover above.  Even when it was snowing at the base of Southern Comfort Lift, it was still sunny.

The exception came when I went over to Bighorn, where visibility became foggy (the photo at the top of this article).

By the afternoon, the clouds cleared, and it truly was a Bluebird Day in every sense of the term.

I should note that I did not add any kind of filter or enhancement to any of these photos.  These are exactly what came from taking quick photos with my phone's camera when I pulled it from my jacket and snapped quick pics.

Here are a few more photos, this time in chronological order.