8th March

And for me day 76 on the hill. After a bit of confusion over daylight saving time starting we headed off to the hill in temps of -12 and a forecast for a high of -2 and more flurries. In the event we did hit -2 around noon but then the temps started falling and by late afternoon the readings over most of the hill were around -10 plus windchill.
The official site said 6 cms in the last 24 hours and again I think they sold themselves a bit short as there certainly seemed to be much more than that in the places we looked. The bad news was that the flurries never materialised so we spent all day trashing yesterday's snow but in a thin season that was still pretty good.
Dave's rib appeared to have recovered but the rest of him hadn't so he had a quiet morning on the groomers and took the afternoon off. Lynda's leg goes from strength to strength and it was half past 2 before she had to leave the hill.
Crowds weren't too bad but made worse by the continued closure of Whitepass chair (no reduction in ticket prices to reflect this) despite promises that it would open around noon. The true story on the problem is that it was a rat but it didn't gnaw through the cable, it got into the works and for a few short seconds it shorted out the system. Sadly the rat was not tested to 800 amps and the result was one very fried rat and a power surge which has damaged so much of the system that the chair may not even open on Monday.
We skied the old side all morning kicking out to Snake Ridge doing Steep and Deep, Redtree, Gorby Bowl, etc. Each time back we looped through Kangaroo making 6 runs down there in all - the roo was as always tricky icey bumps but great fun even allowing for the vandalism undertaken in the summer of cutting a cat track across the middle of the run making a steep drop off half way down. Around lunch we checked out the new side to see if Whitepass was open ( it wasn't) but had a great time in Mitchy Chutes where the summer glading has worked real well. After watching the Dummy Downhill spent the rest of the afternoon hitting out again across Cedar bowl and majoring on Steep and Deep which even late in the day lived up to it's name. In all a pretty good days skiing in powder which got more tracked as the day went on but with plenty of good stuff if you were prepared to go looking for it. When they open Whitepass and Currie bowl it should be awesome.
In the Griz bar the entertainment for us was an RCR employee having a real go at Ruth over who had reserved a chair ( Ruth had taken it for Lynda) No names but the employee concerned would do well to remember that Ruth, Dan, Lynda and I are customers ( with our personal spend and that of our visitors Lynda and I are worth an income stream of $25k alone) and the role of an employee is to make sure we are happy rather than insult us - nice one RCR.
Final word on the hockey. After 2 games in Fernie the Roders and the Nitros are tied at one game all as the series moves to Kimberly, watch this space.
Temp on the deck is -9 and due to go a lot lower with a chance of snow so time for a hot tub and a quiet night in.