Day 81 another short report

Sorry that the reports have been a bit short of late but I have my Irish sailing buddies staying with me and as a result the time to file a report at the end of the evening is very much curtailed by the amount we are drinking each evening, tonight no exception, normal service will be resumed after this weekend.

Today started cold (-12) and to be honest stayed about the same all day so that by last run White pass was showing about -15 and as we drove out of the car park it was -16 and falling. We had 2 cms of fresh over night and it snowed most of the day but at these temps the moisture content was pretty close to zero so the accumulation wasn't much and most of the new snow came from some pretty strong ridge line winds.

We went to the Old side and found that the effect of the overnight freeze was to harden up the base where it had already been skied. The soft stuff on top had no real effect so you spent the whole day being bounced around by the hard under surface and having real problems in trying to keep out of the back seat - not made any easier by the flat light. We looped Steep and Deep from the Gorby shoulder which was untracked but because of the reasons already mentioned was hard work.

Spent all morning on the Old side in Linda's, Boom Ridge (twice) Cedar Ridge ( three times) King Fir, Boom and Buck shot, in fact all over the usual places in the Old side. Of course there was several (four or five) returns through Kangaroo which as always were tough and icey. Overall the Old side was much the same where ever you went, light fluff on top but with the hard base underneath that was always trying to catch you out. Great fun and a great challenge but not everyone's cup of tea.

After a late lunch I hit the New side and having dropped my buddies just hit out to get what I could.
Surprise trees - loads of wind blown and tougher than you would have expected due to to variable quality of the wind blown snow.
Sky Dive - Big hard bumps at the top then hard chunky snow all the way down which skied great as long as you kept up your speed and bossed the snow.
Stag Leap - Softer than Skydive although the ski in through the trees was a bit tougher. Great lower section down to the cat track
Decline/Window chutes - Much the same as Skydive but with the log drop getting to be not much more than a bump, must try finding a way to liven it up tomorrow.
Skydive last rip - much the same as before.

All in all a pretty good day's skiing but hard and challenging. Tomorrows forecast is for -20s on the mercury but a wind chill warning of -42 for the Elk valley. This could be an interesting day.