Tuesday, March 31, 2009

31st March

Day 99 for me and the best day of the season so far - it may be strange to get weather like this so late in the season but it was just awesome.
So what happened? Well, they were calling for 2-4 cms of snow overnight. The official site gave us 7 but that would be from their early morning reading taken at about 6 o'clock. from the moment I woke up at 7 it was puking snow, and I don't men it was just snowing but it was coming down at a fall rate which must have been getting on for 5 cms per hour at times. This kept up until early afternoon when the sun came out for the rest of the afternoon. The result was that by mid day the whole hill was covered in deep, deep fresh snow. As a late season mid week day there was hardly any one on the hill so most of this awesome dump of powder was either untracked or only lightly used.
We weren't the only ones to be surprised by this sudden dump. The City of Fernie were obviously caught with their pants down as there was no ploughing or gritting this morning and the roads were like ice rinks. On the way to the hill we saw two major crashes, one truck off the road and one upside down on it's roof. Despite all the fun we still got to the hill for first tracks.
There isn't much point in describing any individual run as everything was excellent and as we skied the fresh powder our tracks were filling in from a mixture of new snow and wind sift.
The old side start offered up the unusual prospect of skiing North Ridge which had been groomed but now had knee deep untracked powder on it, GS turns all the way down. The usual runs of Cedar and Boom ridges were great and just got better as more snow arrived. The was still a scratchy base when you sunk through so we went to the new side mid morning, powder chasers are never satisfied.
The new side was just awesome. Yesterday's soft base was covered with deep fresh pow and everywhere was face shots top to bottom. The County Line traverse was closed because of the loadings up in Polar chutes but the low traverse still allowed access to the Skydive traverse and discouraged boards ( traversing sucks on a board) and non energetic skiers. Late afternoon the sign line moved down the hill so the traverse became even more hard work but all this did was guarantee the whole Currie Chutes/Skydive/Easter area remained in great shape.
All the usual runs were awesome, Skydive, Decline, The Brain, Stag Leap, Secret Chutes, Spinal Tap, Cougar Glades, Easter Bowl etc etc, some done more than once - mostly untracked or deep tracked soft snow, thigh deep in some of the dips giving great over the head face shots. This was all so good that I couldn't bring myself to break for lunch so the day ran 9-4 with no breaks and of course no line ups, you don't get much bigger days than that. A special mention for a run down Knot chutes followed by Anaconda glades ( second chute was almost waist deep in places) then the tight trees in Bootleg Glades - 3 double black diamond runs one after another !!
Loads of beer with buddies afterwards and the only low spot the Pub reserving a load of tables for outsiders so we had nowhere to sit for wings night for the second week running. Lynda and I decamped to the ever reliable Boston Pizza sorts bar where we had great pasta on their cheap pasta night. I know where I am spending my Tuesdays in future. About zero on the deck and a bit more snow called for tonight so day 100 could be pretty spectacular as well.

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