Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Day 12 another good New Side day

I got an email from my tele skiing buddy Ray from Vermont last night to say he had had enough of the crap conditions out east and he was on his way to Fernie. I am delighted to say he arrived in time to pick up m tab in the Griz bar tonight and the conditions are such that I don't think he will be disappointed.

We went to the hill today under valley cloud in temps of -2 with temps about -5 on top. During the day things got a couple of degrees warmer across the board. There had been 6 cms of very grainy new snow raising the base to just over 150 cms. On top it was clear above the clouds in the morning but socked in around lunch time and once again it started snowing with light snow all afternoon.

Lift line was nicely filled in with soft powder and no one seemed interested in skiing it so we did. From the top of White Pass I had to cut the Idiot Traverse out to Surprise Trees and so grabbed first tracks down through the trees in deep untracked powder - it was so nice I did it again with only a couple of tracks showing. Next time up I found a way into Knot Chutes without having to take too much air to clear the rocks and had a great drop of the Tight Knot having to surf my own slough. Anaconda only had one track in so I grabbed first tracks in Chute 2 which again was deep and pretty spectacular. The trip to base was via Bootleg glades which were surprisingly good if a bit twiggy low down.

The light on top was good above the clouds and it looked like Polar Peak might be opening with patrol doing some cutting. I didn't want to get too far from the possible action so I did Corner Pocket and then High Saddle where the skiing below the Saddles was still great soft deep powder - each time a trip into Easter Bowl was very rewarding. To take me up to lunch I did a couple of loops through Concussion which were also only lightly tracked, soft and deep.

In the afternoon I realised that with the socked in conditions Polar Peak wasn't going to happen but stuck with the New Side, looping Stag Leap, Decline, Cougar Glades, Knot Chutes/ Surprise Trees. The skiing was great in all areas where last night's snow plus what was now falling gave a very nice, soft but undulating terrain to ski.

Of course final run was Skydive which is just getting better and better as the snow accumulates. Like every where else today there was no one around and I guess that yyou could count the number of tracks even at the end of the day on one hand.

Light snow coming down as we sat in the hot tub - I wonder what tomorrow will bring for our guest.

No comments:

Post a Comment