Day 56 Awesome awesome, awesome.,

And if you want another ajective to describe today then just try awesome.

First of all a thanks to all who emailed me to wish me well with the injury and amazingly enough the large numbers of visitors on the hill who knew me, and the blog and wanted to wish me well. I feel a bit of a fraud as the injury responded really well to treatment ( hot tub, beer, vitamin I gel and tabs and ice) so despite being forced off the hill with pain yesterday I was able to ski a full day today although it was a little painful. The injury itself has swollen to a beautiful mass of blue, purple, green, yellow and pretty well every other colour of the rainbow but things should get better from now on.

Arriving at the hill temps were -1 at the base and fell during the day to -7 by the close. Up top we were in -10 but most importantly it puked snow all day from when we arrived to when we left and as I was lying in the hot tub a few minutes ago it was -7 and still puking snow to the point where some got in my beer. Best of all the snow wasn't low moisture fluff but good solid high moisture hero snow which meant that we could pretty well point our skis wherever we wanted and get away with it.

Thinking (wrongly) that temps would still be an issue I went to the New side. I had an experimental run down Puff to see how the leg was and found good deep untracked hero snow and no problem with the leg. I was one happy bunny.

As usual only half of White Pass was open with poor viz and the sign line down at the I bowl. I had three really good deep and fresh runs through the Gun bowl, variations of Highline/Highline Trees and the lower trees which would pass as great powder in most places on earth. Next time up it was apparent that the I bowl was open so time for two runs through Surprise Trees going just a bit further each time to get beyond any tracks - really good skiing.

Next time up Currie bowl had opened and I was amazed to find than not only had the County Line also opened but the saddles were also there for the taking - this didn't deflect me as I was on a mission. I had to cut first tracks along Skydive traverse which was a bit of work but for 5 minute cutting I was rewarded by standing at the top of Skydive in tons of fresh powder and first tracks for me. There is no sensation (at least none I am going to write about here) that begins to match a first track Skydive rip in deep powder, no point in trying to describe it.

Next loop I took Stag Leap on the grounds that it is less used than most and found that only two tracks had been in before me. They obviously knew what they were doing as they had taken the left side where the terrain is best but the right side untracked was good enough for me. Cougar Glades had a few tracks in the top but by pushing left into the tighter trees it was all untracked. The left hand chute ski out which had been pretty slick the day before was now good and soft and great fun to race your own slough to the bottom - even managed to beat it today.

The obvious next choice was the Brain which was well on the right side of awesome. A ski school group had hit the left side but the right side was mostly untracked and some great tight skiing if you held your nerve as the trees tightened.I then headed for Lone Fir and something odd happened.

Actually it wasn't that odd, as I started the side step up my heal binding broke with the usual Rossignol problem of the base plate snapping - about the 5th time it has happened, you would think a big company like Rossignol would have got this sorted years ago. On the bright side it didn't break when I was pushing it in the chute. On the bad side this was about the furthest point you could be to have to get down on one ski with some tricky terrain - rather obviously I made it but it was piece of work.

Dumped the skis in the repair shop to put on a new binding which I have at home. In the meanwhile I used my free performance rental voucher to take out some S3s which this year are 98 m under base and a bit of rocker in tips. Great fun and a quick run down Lift Line convinced me that they were really just like my old S5s.

The whole afternoon was spent on new side loops. Cougar Glades, Currie Creek, Secret Chutes, Spinal Tap, Window chutes (log drop only about 4 ft now), the Brain (untracked even though I had skied it in the morning) and of course Skydive for the last rip. No point in commenting on any of the runs they were all deep and getting deeper in hero snow, previous tracks filled in and just awesome.

Still snowing with tons more to come in the current cycle, things are getting awesome even by Old Fernie standards.