Day 20 well on the right side of acceptable

Of course this is just my famous English sense of humour showing through with a case of serious understatement. The official figures were for 38 cms overnight but of course that measurement was taken at about 5 this morning so as it snowed tons since that time I guess we had about 50 cms of fresh before we hit the hill this morning.

Glad I got that first paragraph down before my buddies Rob and Katie came round for a hot tub party as resuming this report a few hours later and after a whole load of beer I wouldn't have been able to manage anything so erudite. It's still snowing now and looking at the forecast perhaps it's going to snow forever, who knows.

Temps at the start were about -5 but rose steadily during the day so that by late afternoon they were almost up to zero and things looked a little dodgy. As it turned out that was the high (strangely enough just as forecast) and temps are now falling. Snow is continuing to fall but hey, what's news in that, it's been falling for over a week.

We went to the Old Side and although we were the third chair up Bear and well ahead of anything on Boomerang we found Boom, Boom Ridge and Cedar Ridge all tracked out - go figure why being first up doesn't get you first tracks. We played around on the Old Side grabbing what we could in Boomerang, Cedar Ridge, Boomerang Ridge, Linda's and Bear Chutes before heading off to the New Side. they were all pretty good and deep considering that those of us starting at normal time were starting well behind the eight ball.

On the New Side we were all waiting for Currie Bowl to open so we spent a lot of time looping Surprise Trees and Anaconda/Bootleg Glades while we waited. Hardly worth mentioning just how good they were in the new deep snow. Around lunch Currie opened but we had our timing wrong as we had just dropped Anaconda and missed it. On the plus side as we got to the top of White Pass we got the word that Polar Peak was opening ( I suspect Patrol just  want some skier compaction in there) and we were third chair up.

After a few day's closure there was about a metre of new untracked snow in the Polar Chutes and it would have been rude not to trash it. We did four laps off the Peak, three in Papa Bear and one in Mama Bear all of which were a bit white in the top but great lower down. The routes to base each time were -
Cougar Glades - not very tracked with awesome powder. The left cut into Stag Leap low down gave loads more vert in deep powder.
Currie Creek - by the time that most people get to the bridge they are on a mission and Rob and I figured that Currie Creek would have got lost in the rush. We were right and with only two tracks in there we had great powder from top to bottom.
Decline/Window Chutes - chopped powder but great untracked in the trees to the left but a bit tight. In the chute itself the log drop was down to about 5 ft with me hitting it off the middle left to right and Rob right to left into about 6 ft of deep snow.
Stag Leap - just starting to get filled in between the trees at the top and nice chopped powder all the way down

Our final attempt at Skydive was frustrated by Currie being closed for avi bombing. We fished with the Knot Chutes (Tight Knot) Anaconda Glades and Bootleg Glades - not a bad substitute in good blow in over the ridge line.

The hill is still in fantastic shape and more snow is in the offing - bring it on. This was the first day that I skied 9-4 with no breaks at all and I feel that bed is well deserved.