Day 77 no new snow but some ok skiing

Overnight there was no new snow but the base held up at about 256 cms. It was a blue bird day but with starting temps of -16 the snow had dried out and was still in great shape in many places. During the day we had the odd bit of cloud but it was mostly bluebird. Temps rose in the direct sunlight to plus figures but to be fair they remained just below zero at the base in the shade and about -5 on top for most of the day. It was a pretty good day to go skiing.

We went to the New Side which I suppose has become the default setting given the attractions of Polar Peak, both from the point of view of the skiing in the Polar chutes and the fantastic views from the top which on a 360 degree view must rate as one of the top 10 views in skiing anywhere in the world.

As we had friends with us on their last day of their vacation we did some guiding which I hope was appreciated and which involved taking in as much of the New Side steep stuff as we could -
Knot Chutes/Surprise Trees - we went there as the chutes had seemed ok last thing yesterday and Surprise had been in pretty good shape. The chutes were a bit patchy (soft on one side crud on the other) although the trees in Surprise were great soft lightly tracked skiing all the way down.
Polar Peak/Easter bowl/Spinal Tap - actually we did two loops in Polar chutes, the first through Popa Bear and the next through Baby Bear and which were both great with wind sift filling in the bumps. Easter bowl was nice wind sift in the top and Spinal Tap remained soft tracked snow with great jumping from the creek to the right shoulder and back again,
Polar Peak/Decline/Window Chutes - Popa Bear getting even smoother in windsift. Top of Decline quite steep bumps getting better all the way down. Window Chutes were still mostly untracked and soft snow in the main chute with the log drop much reduced but still good fun.
Polar Peak/The Brain - Baby Bear chute still super soft and deep. The Brain had been untracked yesterday afternoon so it looked worth a go. It was: I think mine were still the only tracks in there since yesterday and by taking a slightly different line (since when have you ever been able to drop a tight tree section with the same line twice ?) I had fresh tracks again all the way down.

After lunch it was just a repeat for the guests -
Polar Peak/Easter/Spinal Tap - just like the morning
Polar Peak/Decline/Window chutes - ditto.

This brought the Polar peak total for the day to 6 and the total for the seasn to date 55 which I am sure is well surpassed by some hard core skier but remains an ok total to my way of thinking. With the day winding down we did a loop of Mitchy Chutes (actually really nice blow in) Knot Chutes ( still a bit varied but good soft snow now we knew where to go) and Surprise Trees ( getting a bit tracked up and sun affected and probably a lot tougher than earlier in the day.)

Final run of course was down Skydive which as always was great hard skiing top to bottom with a mix of soft bumps, hard bumps, soft snow, crud and tracked up hard pack - to name but a few.

A few flurries in the offing so lets see what happens.