You can't beat sun, mild winter temperatures and snow.

Sunday was a dynamite day at the Gold Fork Park N' Ski Area, northeast of Idaho City. It was so warm and sunny, snowshoers and skiers were peeling off layers before they even got out of the parking lot. Getting ready for a trek at the truck was enough to work up a sweat before hitting the trails.

It was the perfect sunny day for a parking lot tailgate party after the trek, complete with lawn chairs, camp stove for heating up chili and lots of relaxing in the sun.

Although the snowpack looks skimpy compared to past years, there is plenty of snow to have fun on the trails in the Park N' Ski areas and snowmobile areas, northeast of Idaho City. There's about 6 feet showing at the snow course marker at Mores Creek Summit.

If you ventured off the groomed trails, you could find about 4 inches of carvable snow on the slopes. Our snowshoes sunk in about that much in most areas off trail. We got there around noon and the snow was softening up. Most likely, if you got there earlier in the day you might have hardpack or a little more crunch.

Basically, over the weekend, we had late March and early April conditions up in the mountains. What is really surprising is the lack of snow at lower elevations in the mountains. Where you usually have 3 to 4 feet of snow this time of the year, there's about a foot and bare ground in places. The lower elevation snowpack needs help.

We saw that last weekend on the Camas Prairie near Fairfield. I've seen winters where the snow up there is over the fence posts. Not this year. The fences are visible.

Snowshoeing off the Gold Fork Park N' Ski trails - Photo by Pete Zimowsky/Idaho Statesman