Day 56 Old Side rules

Overnight temps had dropped so it was a start at -13. Got to the hill for a bluebird day - stayed all day and quite literally didn't see a cloud in the sky all day. Temps were meant to get up but didn't get much above -7 at mid mountain but viz was good. No new snow so the base is down to 210cms and we are looking all over to try and find some soft stuff in this snow drought. Needless to say the official web site is announcing "great skiing all a over the resort" - I would like to take the guy who wrote that for a few trips down Kangaroo and see if he would like to revise his opinion.

Went to the Old side and had a re run of yesterday droping Cedar ridge many ways and alternately looping out to Snake ridge/Redtree area. These areas did have tracked but ok snow with a hoare frost covering which gave it a sort of fluffy appearance. Top of Gorby bowl was particularly nice due to the low traffic caused by there not being an obvious way out when you look in from the top - a left/right shuffle in the middle gets over the problem.

At lunch bumped into a buddy who said the New side wasn't up to much so spent the afternoon re doing the morning routine but with more emphasis on Snake ridge, anywhere from Redtree to Snake main. The surface seemed to get a bit more icey as the afternoon wore on which as there was no traffic ( we didn't see anyone out beyond Trillium all day) didn't make much sense. Of course return was usually via Kangaroo which was skied 8 times and just got uglier each time it was skied. Lynda now over her jet lag skied all day, nice to be back to normal.

Both of us bought new helmets. While we were riding the lift yesterday with a buddy from the patrol (Tyler) he raised the point that he had been meaning to mention that our helmets were well past their safety expiry date and in his professional opinion we should get new ones. I respect Tyler's professional opinion so we used our 25% discount voucher and got two new helmets. People ask me where I stand on the helmet debate, the answer is simple, I don't favour any compulsion it's a matter of personal choice. That having been said I think you would have to be a complete retard to ski the stuff we do without a helmet but there is no law against being a complete retard and if someone wants to smash their brains out on a tree why should I care, I really don't.

Still no snow in the immediate outlook so maybe tomorrow may be a hiking day.