Day 2 and we got away with it

Yesterday was great but today we had word that it was going to warm up and rain so we were really expecting a pretty poor day but in the event it turned out fine.

Temps on the deck when we got up were zero and upper mountain temps were -1. The day was overcast, the darkest I have ever seen so that by mid afternoon it was more like midnight and very murky to boot. During the day the temps came up to about +5 but the rain held off so that we had a few ice balls on top late afteroon and as we came off the hill at 4 it was starting to rain at the base. The truth is we got away with it as even with plus temps the snow held up fine for all the time that we were on the hill.

The groomers had been out and quite a lot of the runs had been groomed pretty well if you like that kind of thing. As is well known I don't ski groomers ( except to get from A to B) and hold the fairly controversial view that skiing groomers isn't skiing at all, as a result we made for the most interesting ungroomed terrain we could find.

Again it was Old Side only and we limited ourselves to what we thought would be the best area ranging from Arrow on lookers left to Cedar centre glades on the right. On the left we only got as far as Arrow because we were dropping the Sunny Side shoulder and linking China Wall. On the right we think that going beyond Cedar centre you give away too much vert to get to where you are going, only to have to track back again.

We did everything between our left and right limits several times and would summarize what was there as -
Sunny side/China Wall - the alders are in sort of tufts so you have to navigate round the humps which are quite tight but subject to that nice soft snow - a kind of cross between slalom and bump skiing.
Bear Chutes - Very bushy but the bits in between were still untracked powder.
Boomerang bowl - Great, a big improvement on yesterday as there seemed to have been some blow in which gave a great skiing surface on yesterday's tracked powder.
Boom Ridge - Just like Boom bowl, fantastic wind sift for this time of year,
Linda's Run - Surprise of the day as we expected to have to do some serious bushwhacking to get through and it was actually the clearest pitch on the whole hill - better than I have seen in mid season in other years in Linda's.
Cedar Ridge - Like yesterday great powder skiing in between the alders and undergrowth, you just had to pay attention.
Nearside Cedar to the Gully - Surprisingly good tracked powder with a ski out on to the trail possible through a few alders which is a lot better than it usually is at this time of year.
Cedar Centre Glades - Still huge fun in soft tracked powder with trees tight enough and terrain varied enough for the whole thing to be stacks of fun.

So that was it and just as the rain was about to start it was over - as I said we got away with it. We now have 4 days to kill before opening proper and with more snow in forecast the hill should stay in pretty good shape. More thoughts during the week as things develop. We have just leafed through Lynda's old journals and the snow figures this year look like being some of the best of the last 8 years.