Day 20 and pretty awesome in places

The rain that was heaving down in town last night turned to wet snow eventually and we woke to fine a fresh covering and conditions of around zero. The situation when we got to the hill was that we had 30 cms over night and the base was now a solid ( in every sense of the word) 185 cms. Given yesterdays rain at low level the only way to go was to go high on the New Side to White Pass and loop up there in the combination of yesterdays snowfall plus what we had over night.

Most of the New side was closed so the first few runs were through the Gun bowl, Highline, Heartland etc all of which were good. About third loop through some buddies from the Patrol tipped me the wink that they were about to drop the fence on the I bowl so we were able to ski over with them and duck the fence to get first tracks as soon as they lifted it. An awesome run down a totally untracked bowl - how good was that.

White Pass Chair then broke down for 20 minutes so we looped to the bottom through Black Cloud which was a bit too chunky at the bottom to be fun. As soon as normal service was resumed we went back to looping Surprise Trees where there were many different lines to be taken providing fresh snow as long as you were prepared to cut it close to the trees. We also took a few drops through Anaconda and then on to Bootleg Glades all of which was very nice untracked powder and kept on going until they closed the Glades around luch due to an increased avi risk on the back of rising temps - they had just had a class 3 natural in Lizard bowl.

In the afternoon we had a quick trip through Mitchy's on the way to White Pass which was nice and deep in all the chutes. We then looped Surprise Trees all afternoon. Each loop we went further into the trees skiing an area that I haven't really skiied that much in the past. We ended up dropping onto Trespass Trail not that far beyond Bootleg and had some just awesome skiing through the trees which in that part of the world are tight, but not too much, and quite steep but well able to be skiied in nice linked turns as long as you put your mind to it.

Had a few beers in the Griz afterwards and then on the the Pub for wings night. Forecast looks like it will cool over the next couple of days with more snow then a few days of much colder dry weather - the jury is out.