Monday, December 13, 2010

Day 10 the best of times and the worst of times

So far this season we have had the best of times with the most awesome opening week for many years and today we had the worst of times with the hill in horrible shape due to the pineapple express,

In the valley it rained pretty well all night and though the hill was calling for 19 cms in the last 24 hours it didn't say 19 cms of what. On the way to the hill it was +2 and raining. We decided that the best thing to do was to go high but were told that Timber wasn't going to open for half an hour and White Pass would be even longer. By force of circumstances we headed for the old side.

The rain line was just about at the top of the Bear so everything was subject to rain damage. The rain had gone higher during the night so the ridge lines were very, very unstable and as a result both Lizard and Cedar bowls were close so there was only very limited terrain. We skied around on Bear, North Ridge, and similar areas and found rain on the top of soft snow was predicably heavy elephants snot with only the groomed lower hill even half way decent but that was in heavy rain.

Eventually the New side opened and we went to investigate. The very top of Timber was wet snow which turned to rain at about White Pass base. After a couple of rounds we were told that White Pass wouldn't be opening at all today which meant that the only chance of anything like normal skiing was gone. With nothing left but the option of rain skiing on a highly restricted hill we decided there were better things to do and headed home for beers an a hot tub.

The future looks very unclear. More precip called for with falling temps so if the base freezes before the snow falls things should be great but if the snow falls wet before the freeze cuts in we will have conditions as ugly as bears ass. Only time will tell.

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