Day 19 hoist by my own petard

And before anyone goes off to look up the above quote , it's from Hamlet, so why does it apply to me. A couple of days ago a buddy described the skiing as awesome and I checked him because, as I said, when the skiing gets better how are you going to describe it. Yesterday with the fantastic conditions I used the A word and now here I am trying to think of something better to describe today. Worse still, with 30 cms called for tonight (and it was puking snow earlier when I was drinking beer in the hot tub and still is coming down looking out on the deck) and perhaps a metre by Sunday what am I going to be able to say then.

I didn't think there had been much snow overnight and temps on the way to the hill were a nippy -12. There was an inversion so it was a balmy -8 on top but the boards were claiming 10 cms of fresh and a base of 182 cms. We went to the New Side in anticipation of a Reverse Traverse/Saddles opening and found that there was at least 10 cms of new snow on top of yesterday's deep fluff and a fair bit of blow in as well. To make things even better it started to snow, kept it up all day and shows no sign of stopping so things just got better still.

We did an Anaconda loop which has deep fresh blow in while waiting for the Traverse to open. My timing must have been a bit off as we missed it as all my buddies liked to tell me later. That having been said there was some awesome awesome skiing to be had - highlights were -

Cougar Glades - only three tracks in the top all of which went right giving us the tight left side trees totally untracked. Over the head face shots all the way down and fall line S's in the narrow tree chutes. We cut left at the summer bike trail and had the bottom half of Stag Leap which was tracked but deep.

The Brain - for the first time this year I thought it was worth giving this a try as the deadfall had much more cover now. There was one track in the top that cut towards Skydive so the rollers on the top section hadn't been touched. In the dips of the rollers the snow was chest deep and light. The rest was good until the last couple of turns where I git suckered into being greedy and had to shuffle over some dead fall to get out.

Corner Pocket - I noticed the Saddles were open and very few were staying high enough to get up to CP so with a couple of side steps I went in. The snow in the chute was deep soft and easy - well as easy as a double black diamond chute gets. Under the chute the sking defied description with deep continual face shots for as long as you could ski without breathing. Exit to Easter bowl left was deep and only lightly tracked. Lynda had done Concussion instead and insisted on another CP run so she could see how good it was - even she was impressed.

Window Chutes - I hit left off Decline which had been pretty good anyway. Deep untracked snow to the left of the chute and so much soft stuff at the log drop that I hit it full force off the centre - 5 or 6 ft drop. Even the exit was not scratchy as it usually is.

Secret Chutes/Spinal Tap - great deep snow in Secret Chutes. Spinal Tap was a bit of a mistake as the old fallen trees weren't covered, there seemed to be a couple of new fallen trees to me and the stream hadn't fully filled in. There was some very tight dancing on the deep soft snow on the right shoulder to effect an exit.

Return to Couger Glades - what can I say, a bit harder left and it was still untracked just like first run of the day. Almost made me wish I had just lapped the Glades all day. For the first time this year we tried the left hand exit at the bottom which was mostly untracked, very deep, a bit twiggy and great fun.

Skydive - last run of the day in tracked deep powder which had improved as the day went on with the all day snow fall. A great final rip on the edge of control all the way down to finish the day.

There was some other stuff in there but after a lot of beer after skiing and almost falling asleep in the hot tub that's all I can remember. Loads of snow in the outlook between here and Sunday, if the world does end on Friday I am going to be so p---ed off.