Day 12 more like early season conditions

A number of people have expressed disappointment over the past couple of days over the conditions. We must bear in mind that the conditions for the first 9 days of this season have been totally exceptional in that the powder has been as good as any you will get. Certainly things have gone downhill over the past few days but however you look at it the conditions are more than ok for mid December - we can all remember seasons when we have been downloading on Timber chair due to lack of snow so at least now we have good coverage all over the hill.

Over night there had been wind and about 10cms of fresh snow with temps well below zero. On the way to the hill it was -1 and we had light flurries off and on all day. The temp didn't change much all day and tonight it is heading down to about -6.

The effect on the snow was that everything that had softened yesterday was a hard refrozen base with some soft on top but in other places the soft seemed to run much deeper. First run off the top of Timber was down Lift Line which had grabby soft on rough boiler plate with death cookies. We found that tough and thought that if that was what the day was going to be like it was going to be super tough - fortunately it was ( and remained throughout) the ugliest run of the day.

We looped White Pass a few time enjoying good fresh powder in the Gun bowl and jumping the avi fracture line which had been marked by ski patrol. Surprise Trees was mostly untracked but with the hard base coming through when you least expected it. About 11 they opened Currie bowl and also the County Line and that was it as far as we were concerned.

We spent the whole day working our way across Currie Chutes going a little further down the County Line each time to find fresh tracks. We did take a look in the Saddles but they were closed and similarly I once hiked Cornice Ridge with view to dropping Lone Fir only to find that it was also closed - second prize was to drop back into the top of Cornice Chute (untracked) so it wasn't all bad.

All the runs were pretty much the same (Concussion several ways, Toms, Tekkers, Cornice Chute, Barracuda twice, Currie Creek and Cougar Glades twice) beautiful untracked powder at the top becoming a reasonable depth of soft on boiler plate base about 2/3rds of the way down.
As always finished with a rip down Skydive which was in rather better condition than expected and made me wish we had gone out that way earlier - ah well there is always tomorrow.

Beers, hot tub and bed. Can't make any comment on the Old side not having been there but I get the impression that it was mostly like lower Currie Chutes which would make it ok. No real snow in the forecast but with disturbed conditions who knows and the wind does suggest that blow in could be a good compensation high up tomorrow.