Day 24 Saved by the afternoon wind sift

Today had the makings of a day just like the last half dozen or so. The temp on arrival at the hill was -7 and again it stayed cold on top made worse by wind and warmed to just below freezing at the base. With no new snow the base stayed at 103 cms and the 40% chance of flurries called for the afternoon disappeared as the skys cleared and we had a blue bird end to the day.

Skiing was ok up high, slick and crunchy down low with the New Side generally in much better shape than the Old Side. For everything else you could read yesterday's report and I could end things here. That would be if it wasn't for the wind sift that came in on a quite strong and very cold wind later in the day which did change things somewhat.

We went to the Old Side first to test things and found every thing pretty crunchy and difficult. All over Cedar Ridge was hard under foot and Boom Ridge was particularly hard work. Steep and Deep didn't seem to have more tracks than a couple of days ago so I concluded it was still crust and didn't even go to check it out. Having established that the Old Side remained too marginal to be fun with the possible exception of Boom Bowl which was starting to fill in with some wind grooming as we made our choice to try the New Side.

The New Side was just like yesterday with ok snow up on top but as the day went by the blow in wind sift improved the situation by the hour. We just ran out to all the Currie chutes and found that the sift in the top had created great wind grooming pretty well anywhere you went. The exits of course were still rather hard but considering the low base and just how little snow we have had it wasn't all that bad.

The steep chute into Concussion was particular fun with edge to edge jumping required to keep control. All the other stuff (Tom's. Barracuda, Concussion chutes, Cougar Glades, Easter Bowl, and Alph Centauri) were good wind sift for at least the top sections. When the action flagged we dropped back into Surprise trees which was chunky but ok.

Main downer of the day was putting a 6 inch core shot in the base of my good skis on the Reverse Traverse by hitting a submerged rock ( enough sift to hide it but not enough to protect you) and taking a high speed header as a result. Skis are now in with the excellent Gear Hub for repair so it was back to the rock skis and fingers crossed that they hold together for the next three days until the good ones are repaired.

The Polar Peak lift looks like a non starter (quite literally) for the Christmas period. I understand that the inspectors have headed off for their Christmas break and so nothing will be happening for a couple of weeks. I can't be certain as official sources are strangely quiet on the subject so let's see - perhaps they are still working out how to spin this.

In the afternoon I met a few Blog fans who made some kind comments on my poor efforts and we skied to gether for a while. Pleasure to meet you guys, spread the good word. We had a final run through Skydive and Stag Leap but to be quite honest the snow was starting to get a bit tracked up in there and there were very few good powder turns to be had. Still, it had to be tried.

This evening we had our traditional pre Christmas meal in the lounge at Lizard Creek. Most years we have to get there early to get a place, this year we were the only ones there all evening except for a family of 4 which arrived just as we left. Surely it can't stay this quiet. Loads of snow still in the forecast over the next 7 days.