Thursday, March 18, 2010

Day 97 and more strange weather

Last night the temps dropped to about -3 in the valley so at least -6 at the top of the hill. The result was that all of the damp snow that fell late yesterday hardened up so that most of the hill had a fairly hard base with a little soft on top. On the south facing slopes it was still all underpinned with uneven boiler plate.

The forecast was for a sun cloud mix and what actually happened was that the sun came out at the top with valley fog and by the time the fog started to burn off the sun was hazing over so that it never got really warm on the south facing slopes and conditions remained hard. Later in the day a series of weather cells rolled up the valley bringing heavy snow showers which lasted about 20 mins then some sun but with the next cell very visible coming at us. The result was fresh snow dumping on some very hard base which made for interesting skiing.

We went to the New side and stayed there. Lift Line was much harder bumps than yesterday. We spent all morning tripping around the Gun bowl and various bits of White Pass looking for soft without much success. We almost got to the point of skiing groomers - only joking. Eventually we found loops on 1-2-3s which were ok and Anaconda which were hard but ok, have to pay attention when Anaconda is hard.

Last run before lunch we hit Skydive and found a couple "looking for the easy way down" - how do these people do this considering they have to go through agate warning them of extreme terrain. Pointed them down Skydive and left them to it. In the event Sykdive seemed ok but whether that was because it was or whether it was because after some of the boiler plate we had skied anything felt good is anyone's guess.

Must have been ok as after lunch we looped Stag Leap, Decline, Cougar Glades, Anaconda and Skydive. All of these were hard bumps but skiable if you kept your mind on the job. Tough skiing that left you feeling really beaten up but that's the challenge of spring skiing.

Hot tub to soak away the pain then beers and an early night.

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