Sunday, March 14, 2010

Day 93 and daylight saving causes confusion.

Of course shifting to daylight saving time usually causes confusion, but not with us, the clocks went forward as per schedule and we arrived at the hill on time. The problem was that some how you don't make the adjustment in your head. At 11 in the morning you are saying that the south facing slopes must have softened in the sun and of course they haven't because yesterday you wouldn't have been saying that at 10 in the morning. Result - too early into most of the crunchy stuff.

Overnight the temps had fallen to -6 and the day was forecast to give us sun and cloud with a plus temp. We had a bit of a mix with temps at about +3 but rising to +7 on the drive down town which it must have been off and on while we were on the hill.

The mistake of the day was to try the Old side all morning which didn't prove great but we figured (wrongly) that the New side would be no better. The only good stuff was Cedar ridge to King Fir several ways which was at least soft at the top if crunchy low down. Worst places were Sunny side shoulder (totally refrozen crud) Boomerang (mostly refrozen crud) and Kangaroo - don't even ask, far and away the worst it has been all season, so much so that even I only did it once. Looked at Snake ridge but given the lack of melting it didn't look like much fun.

In the afternoon went to the New side and found things were much better. Lift line and the surrounding chutes were all soft snow. Gun bowl had melted and was easy skiing. We hit Anaconda several times with the ski out through Boomerang near trees which were all soft and deep if a bit tracked up. I went out to try Decline while Lynda dropped 1-2-3s as she thought that would be good - score one for Lynda. Decline was actually pretty good at the top but from half way down it was yesterday's soft melt refrozen which was just hard work, so much so that a couple of rest breaks had to be called.

At the end Polar peak was opened for the last run but with such a hard day this wasn't an option. Can't see why it won't be open tomorrow for an early start with only about 3 tracks in it.

Bad news of 3 killed in an avi at Revelstoke but they were attending an un authorise snow mobile event at a hill known for it's avi danger when BC avi had called extreme risk - no comment.

Riders lost this afternoon's game in Nelson so 2-1 down in the series but playing again tomorrow in Nelson. Go riders Go.

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