Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Day 5 the heavy heavy powder show

As forecast we had snow overnight which amounted to 6 cms but further snow during the day probably gave us about another 10 cms during the day. It was -4 on the way to the hill and snow continuing from the overnight. Very quickly temps rose so that at the base for most of the day it was about zero, snow turning almost to rain but colder on top with continuing snow for most of the day.

Viz was pretty bad so we went to the old side to get some skiing in below the tree line. We got first tracks in Boom bowl and Linda's and then just early tracks in Boom ridge, Cedar ridge right, Cedar ridge left with the gully. We returned three times through Kangaroo and then just found more skiing all over the Cedar ridge area. The overnight snow produced good powder on the upper mountain and although the lower hill was good old Sierra cement it was still very nice early season conditions.

As the snow on the lower hill was verging on rain we headed over to the new side in the hope that the precip higher up would remain snow. We sort of got it right and for the rest of the day the precip on the new side remained ice/wet snow off and on until the end of the day.

White Pass did become very white with viz dropping so that on the chair you could only see three chairs ahead. Rather surprised to find the County line still open so we pushed along it a couple of times and dropped right into some untracked chutes into Currie bowl.

Later the line closed so all we could do was to get into Alpha Centauri from Currie Powder and this again was all fresh powder. Eventually Currie was closed due to avi risk so we just cycled on Anaconda/Bootleg to the bottom or back through Surprise trees. Anaconda off the humps was awesome deep powder but with a couple of rock scrapes, generally Anaconda to the bottom was the deepest powder on the hill. For the first time this year we dropped the trees just before Bootleg which was again deep, deep powder and tight trees.

For a change all afternoon off the top of Timber we tried different ways to get back to White Pass involving hitting the chutes beyond Hollywood rock which was waist deep powder all the way down. A final run off the hill through Anaconda 2 which was deeper than ever and then a couple of beers.

Temps ahve risen to +3 and it makes you wonder what will happen. Some forecasts are calling for 15 cms but at these temps who knows what will hit us.

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