Day 89 a quick report.

The reason the report will be quick is that we are heading off for a hockey game tonight ( first game of the best of 7 play off series for the Okanagan division against Nelson Leafs) which should be a good hard play off game - go Riders g0.

There had been no snow overnight and the starting temp on the deck was just below zero so the overnight conditions had frozen but hadn't gone boiler plate. There was a forecast for rain which never materialised and all we had was a lot of "weather" in the form of wind, cloud, light snow/ice pellets etc.

We took the view that conditions would be much the same as yesterday but with the light much flatter and the ridge lines loading up in the wind the Fish bowl would not be an ideal choice. When we arrived at the hill we were told that White pass chair was down for essential maintenance so we formulated the plan to try the Old side in the morning, lunch early and then hit the New side in the afternoon, in the event we followed the plan and had a more than ok day.

After a quick loosener down Arrow which demonstrated that there was a bit of wind sift and the base was a little softer, we headed out into Cedar bowl. Dropped into the trees in mid bowl which is something we haven't tried since early season and found plenty of soft snow and some nice lines through the trees. Back through Kangaroo was, as always, hard ice bumps and then Boomerang which had some soft on top but was not a whole lot better.

Spent the morning looping on Snake (icey bumps with some soft), the trees just before Snake (rather soft all the way down but just a bit ribby at the bottom), Gorby bowl ( soft and untracked in the top, a bit technical in the cliff area and pretty scrapy at the bottom) and Redtree ( much the same as Snake). Always back through Kangaroo which never softened then the Bear chutes which had some blow in but which were icey underneath. Did one loop back through Buckshot which was blow in at the top and icey bumps at the bottom then finished in Linda's which was much the same.

After lunch hit the new side and tried Surprise trees which were tracked up powder on refrozen crud and generally a bit of a waste of time. Anaconda and Bootleg both proved to be much better with some hard patches but generally some soft blow in taking an edge.

Later we hit the County Line out to Decline which had been very much improved by the soft wind blown snow. Dropped Window chutes more to say that we had done it than for any other reason and found good untracked snow as far as the log drop, the drop itself up to about 6 ft then some pretty slick ice on the ski out through the stream bed at the bottom. Another trip in a further chute of Anaconda proved that the snow there was getting very good but the chutes a bit tight and technical.

Last run of the day down Skydive confirmed that where the snow hadn't melted the base was ok and the recent snow made beautiful soft bumps to play with. Good play off hockey game that we won 2-1 and a report on the radio on the way back that we should expect about 2 ft of snow out of the weather systems hitting us this weekend. Starting to get a little optimistic.