Day 42 a whole lot better than you might expect

The hill was a mess yesterday and last night it rained in town, boy did it rain. It hammered down all night so that the streets were running with a sort of watery ice sludge by morning. The only glimmer of hope was that it was coming down at +1/+2 so there was a hope that it was snowing up top although because the rain was coming out of a warm air mass the snow line was going to be high.

Getting to the hill it looked like the snow line was well up the mountain and conversations confirmed that it had been moving up and down all night. The snow report claimed 8 cms of fresh ( advisedly didn't say fresh what) but the same snow report claimed great skiing "all over the resort" which was clearly a nonsense. We went high into White Pass with a view to getting the best of whatever was available - actually not we, just I as Lynda headed back to the UK today for a week to check out stuff there.

Right from the top of the Timber Chair things seemed ok. We probably had about 8 cms of Jersey cream overnight which had filled in the dips and gave nice if a little heavy untracked skiing. The top of White Pass was very socked in even for White Pass and Currie bowl was closed and remained so all day for avi risk so should be good when it opens tomorrow. Best of all was that the precip stopped and held off all day so at least we remained dry.

Temps rose a little during the day with about +5 at the bottom and zero at the top so the point at which the snow started to feel a bit heavy and rubbery crept up to about half way up White Pass by the end of the day. With Currie closed and the Old side rain affected we only had limited terrain to play on but made the most of Surprise Trees ( about 6 different ways), Highline Tree, Milky Way Trees and anything else we could find up there.

As the light improved the Gun bowl proved good fun with a nice covering and all the bumps taken out by the new snow. Knot Chutes opened and a hike to the top to ski the near shoulder proved very rewading in yet more untracked cream. Just before lunch Anaconda opened and again was heavy and untracked and requiring a lot of attention to avoid your own wet snow sloughs.

Spent the afternoon hiking Knot Chutes (I do miss the low traverse in at my age) and skiing the various tight far chutes, then dropping Anaconda by a further chute each time ( lightly tracked) and getting to the Gilmar trail via Bootleg Glade which by this stage was good old fashioned spring elephant snot.

Finished the day by dropping the very far side of Surprise Trees (again pretty well untracked) and coming out on the trail not far from the top of Diamond Back. DB was a lot of fun on the right where it hadn't been groomed and the snow was so heavy you could put your skis in the fall line and hardly move.

In summary, not a great day but really quite acceptable conditions high up and a very nice surprise considering what we thought we might get. Who knows what tomorrow brings.