Ok lets do weather followed by what conditions that gave followed by what we did with them.
Overnight I guess that the snow/rain on the hill started to work it's way down the hill during the night although when I got up for a pee at about 2 o'clock it was still raining. By morning the snow had worked it's way down to the valley floor so we had snow all over the house and garden. The hill was calling about 16 cms overnight which seemed about right with the base starting to get up to 259 cms. During the day systems kept coming through dropping snow/ice ball bearings topping up what we had and best of all there was not rain, not even at the base.
The effect was to cover some of what had happened yesterday but not enough to do the job where heavy snow had been pushed up leaving heavy death cookies. The main results were dust on good soft snow very high, dust on death cookies lower down and breakable crust going to variable below that. This meant that the higher you went the better the conditions were and with that in mind we headed to the New side.
As with yesterday the warning signs were there on the run down from Timber on lift Line but this time it was the lower turns becoming hard and full of death cookies in the refrozen crud. As Currie bowl was open we tried 1-2-3s which were in pretty good shape with two days snow in there and looped back to White Pass on Trespass Trail. That was our last good decision in Currie as our excursions along the County Line to the Currie Chutes, Cougar Glades and Skydive all proved a bit trying.
Perhaps it is best to describe Cougar Glades which were a typical example. On the way out the traverse was testing with lots of fill in snow. The first few turns were untracked powder then you hit the unskied stuff from yesterday. This had set up on top with a soft covering but no real substance so you were skiing breakable crust with a depth of about 15 cms, sometimes both skis on top, sometimes both broken through and sometimes one and not the other, probably the most testing surface of the season. In the lower part of the run yesterdays snow had melted to the point where it formed a firm base so you were skiing dust on crust which was hard but at least you knew where you were. After a morning like that lunch was called for.
In the afternoon we worked out that all the best snow was in the top of White Pass so all you had to do was to drop the gun bowl and stay between Heartland and Surprise chutes and you had really good, and I do mean good, skiing on real winter snow with some areas untracked and all deep. To extend the limited range we hiked Knot chutes which like all the rest of that face was great soft snow.
To finish we dropped Anaconda ( had done so earlier but can't quite remember when) and found it soft and deep in the top getting a little chunky on the ski out. Ignored Bootleg and took the easy way out on Gilmar Trail which considering the earlier work didn't seem unreasonable.
All in all a pretty good day which would have been excellent if we could have curbed or inclination to go further afield and have been contentented just to run up and down White Pass in what was the best winter snow we have seen for some time.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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