Day 72 Heavy, heavy, heavy

Although there didn't seem to be much fresh snow in the drive the hill was reporting 14 cms of fresh on top of the 11 cms we got yesterday. This proved to be about right but the snow low down was heavy and became heavier during the day as about another 10 cms of mid mountain snow fell but on the lower slopes it was coming down as wet snow/rain. By the end of the day I guess the base had to be up to 230 cms with good powder up top and very chunky soft down low.

With most of the hill socked in we decided to go to the old side which we thought would be good for a few runs before the conditions down low became too heavy. Most of the crowds went to the new side so we had first tracks in Boomerang, Cedar ridge and the part of Bear chutes that we tried. Amazingly there were one set of tracks in Kangaroo which skied soft and heavy and we found Linda's very tracked out and very heavy - time to go to the new side.

By this time it was light rain at the bottom and snow at the top so a few loops in Surprise Trees were called for which were deep and mostly untracked I guess because the drop through the Gun Bowl was so "white". Sooner or later we had to bite the bullet and drop to the base and risk the rain, so we did.

Having been tipped off by Patrol that the saddles had opened we hit Corner Pocket where enough tires were covered to make some careful edge to edge jumping possible. Under the pocket we had early tracks in the bowl with some awesome over the head face shots all the way down and into Easter bowl. Next time round hike Cornice ridge and dropped the chute beyond Lone Fir which was more or less unskied and then deep powder to the bottom.

Didn't stop for lunch and just looped out to Stag Leap, Cougar Glades, Anaconda/Bootleg Skydive, Window chutes, the Brain and of course finished with one more down Skydive. All were tracked but not so much that there wasn't fresh to be found (particularly Window chutes and the Brain) with the lower parts heavy wet snow but still lots of fun if you paid attention.

All in all a very good powder day where you just had to watch what you were doing in the heavy stuff and could enjoy yourself in the deep stuff up top. Hoping for a bit more but it is very warm, +2 on the deck this evening. The flip side of that is that if temps drop the lower sections of all the challenging runs will be refrozen crud and real nighmare, ah well, whatever comes we will ski it.