Day 96 A nice day on the hill

Yes today was a nice day which should be enough for anyone but after yesterday's awesomeness it does seem a little flat. Temps were lower this morning at about -4 as we headed for the hill and reports said -7 on top. Forecasts were for a sun cloud mix but in the event we had overcast conditions so that sun damage was minimised but we did have very warm temps by afternoon, +6 at the base and +2 at the top which did lead to rather unstable snow conditions.

I seem to have said this so often this year - we headed for the New side. I think the reason that we have done so much New side skiing this year is in part because the temps have been close to zero so height has been needed to get good snow and in part because of the unstable snow conditions openings on the New Side have been delayed giving us fresh snow there days after the main storm.

We had hoped that the cold last night would have dried the snow leaving a light base but in truth it had just chunked up the tracked powder so what was left was much harder skiing than yesterday. We looped all the usual places, Skydive, Cougar Glades, Stage Leap, Easter bowl and Decline. Of all of them Stag Leap had about the softest snow particularly on the left with the rest pretty tough skiing by comparison. Drops from Timber were either by Lift Line or Mitchy Chutes both of which had a firm base but soft enough to take a nice edge with a couple of cms of fresh.

After lunch we linked up with a group who had never skied Gotta Go and as we thought this might be some good snow we headed out that way. We were right, it was the best soft, lightly tracked, deep snow on the hill. The run down through Bootleg was also pretty good.

At Timber we were told that Currie bowl was closed because of the avi risk from warming temps and this included the ridge all the way across and beyond Anaconda. We amused ourselves by looping Knot Chutes - all very good but Tight Knot probably the best. After that we were alternating Triple Trees (quadruple on the last run through right to the lower cat track) and Surprise Trees which turned out to be really much better soft partially packed powder than we expected.

On one of the loops down lift line I was goaded in to hitting Hollywood Rock again even though I thought the landing was tougher than yesterday, to my surprise it proved much softer and I was able the make the perfect landing rather better than yesterday - shows what I know.

So the weekend comes and I never thought I would say It but I feel sorry for the weekend worriors. Last weekend their skiing was ruined by the conditions and closures. During the week we have had rolling openings of all the areas on a daily basis so that we have had fresh snow everyday and been able to trash everything on the weekdays. Saturday comes and everything is trashed with a new weather cycle starting on Sunday - ah well that's just the way it goes.