Day 73 Fresh snow + no people = one good day

And that was how it was today. Lets start with the facts. The forecasters called for a snow rain mix overnight but in the event it just rained in the valley all night long. The encouraging thing was that the temps on the deck were always in the +1/+2 range so that the suspicion was always that there would be good snow on the hill. As day dawned it became apparent that the the snow/rain line was very low on the hill and that for the most part the precip had come down as snow over most of the hill. Official reports gave 15 cms of fresh and a base of over 260 cms so we headed to the New Side to take advantage of the fresh overnight snow.

The snow was quite heavy with a lot of moisture but still pretty ok. We did a quick loop in White Pass which was restricted by avi closures but two loops confirmed that even in slightly socked in conditions everything was ok but a bit heavy with poor viz. Suddenly all the sign lines dropped and we had Timber, I Bowl, Knot Chutes, Anaconda, Currie bowl and the County Line available to us at a stroke.

In the heavy snow we had a couple of abortive attempts to get out to Anaconda before we hit on the idea of dropping the Knot chutes (awesome) then taking a high traverse for first tracks in Anaconda (awesome) and the then hitting the tree chutes in Bootleg (awesome, awesome) all in all a good call.

After that the pattern was set and we headed out on the County line ducking into Cougar Glades, The Brain, Concussion and Currie Creek before finishing for lunch on Stag leap. All were awesome and un tracked due to the lack of people on the hill. When was the last time you lined up for a powder day and only had 6 people waiting with you at first turn at Timber Chair.

Aternoon it started to puke snow so much that viz was a problem and I just cycled all the new side runs, Window chutes twice ( log drop off has reached the stage where you are acually doing things to make it more rowdy) went to Lone Fir but as it had been skied hit the two chutes beyond (one step beyond ?) where it was steep deep and un tracked.

After that with the snow building up so quick you were getting first tracks in runs you had already skied yourself it was Cougar Glades, Secrect Chutes/ Spinal tap, a quick run back through Siberia Ridge (the terrian at the bottom just awsome).

All day we had to contend with a rain crust band on the lower mountain which was always a bit testing everytime you looped through the base sections. Heard a few moans in the locker rooms about this but to be honest it wasn't much of a problem and you just had to suck it up as a price of getting the good skiing.

The final rip through Skydive was just spectacular with a ton of fresh effectively giving you untracked powder all the way down on last run of the day, we flew it with what seemed like super human powers (a quote from a ski DVD) for what was probably the run of the season so far.

Puking snow as we left the hill - hoping for an awesome day tomorrow and with deck temps of - 1 this could just be the case.