Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Day 48 and 12 knots

The reference isn't to the wind speed but the number of times I hiked knot chutes today but more later to explain this strange behaviour.

As I mentioned yesterday the hill had slushed to well above the half height level at the close so when this morning the deck temp was -4 it was pretty obvious that anything but really high was going to be as ugly as a bear's ass. The official report said that with no new snow but some wind blown stuff there was great skiing all over the hill. I really must find out who writes those reports and find out what they are drinking as I want a bottle of it as it clearly is good stuff.

I went high into White Pass and after a couple of looseners through Surprise Trees I hiked Knot chutes and found great deep soft snow. Spent the rest of the morning hiking Knot and then dropping some aspect of Surprise from the near chutes to the boonies.

Half way through the morning White Pass chair broke down so we had to ski to the bottom and this put my theory of the lower mountain to the test. Below White Pass I dropped the next section of Lift Line and found that the first two turns in were ok, the next two a bit scratchy and after that just hard refrozen crud all the way down to the Summer Road - the plan to say high looked like a pretty good one.

Spent the rest of the morning when White Pass got running again looping Knot Chutes and Surprise finishing by dropping Anaconda further than I had ever been in and found fresh but tight conditions.

After lunch I did a full repeat including the final run through Anaconda and Bootleg glades. The final tally was 12 hikes of Knot chutes which is far and away the most I have ever done in a day and I am/was totally knackered.

Good wings night at the pub and generally much too much to drink. Thanks to tonight's sponsors of Kokanee, Fernie Pale Ale and now at home Jamesons Irish Whiskey.

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