Sunday, April 5, 2009

5th April

Day 104 was a typical blue bird spring day and exactly the type of skiing that you would expect at this time of year. I decided to try out my new skis and found that although the new skis matched the old ones exactly in shape and length the datum point for mounting the bindings were about 10 cms further forwaed than on the old skis. Interestingly enough this didn't seem to make the slightest difference to the way they skied which was just like the old ones but with a bit of life. Having proved them to be more than ok I switched back to the old skis for the afternoon.
We got to the hill and as expected found that everything had frozen hard overnight so again we had to stick to the groomers until things started to soften. On the old side this started earlier than we expected and by 10 o'clock the groomed part of lower North Ridge was already turning to slush. A couple of trips in and out of Cedar on the groomers with even the gulch having been groomed convinced us that things were getting softer and a vistit to Kangaroo confirmed this although contending with the soft in the sun and the crunch in the shade was very interesting. It wasn't long befoore Boomerang and Boomerang ridge were skiable although yet again after skiing the ridge in view of the chair the skiers that had been encouraged to follow didn't seem to be enjoying it that much. Cedar ridge proved to be a fairly undamaged nice surprise in the circumstances. Yet again Sunny Side shoulder hadn't softened as quick as the rest which is odd as it gets more direct sunlight and I must find out the reason for this.
The new side again had slightly better snow although an attempt at Surprise trees found some very slushy conditions. Last run before lunch was a quick trip down Skydive which was good at the top but variable in and out of the sunlight as you got to the bottom.
In the afternoon I hooked up with some buddies and we tried to find good off piste skiing not too damaged by the sun with not much success. I suppose 1-2-3's was about the best with the run out on a groomed Diamond Back a good way of avoiding lower hill elephant's snot. Concussion was so slushy that a life jacket had to be a serious consideration to avoid drowning while skiing it. A trip to Easter bowl had variable results with the best skiing on corn snow in the more tracked areas. We returned to the old side for some late groomer skiing and a call from me to try the Meat Hook as last run of the day proved to a disaster as access to the groomed runs was excluded by avi control signs and the run from the top was the worst kind of refrozen semi tracked crud.
Perfect end to the day sitting on the locals deck drinking beer in the sun and chatting about skiing with buddies like lawyer John who wants me to mention the word creamy in the blog. Another sunny day called for tomorrow.

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