Thursday, December 6, 2012

Day 6 is this the start of winter ?

After yesterday's pretty crappy day things had to improve today and sure enough they did. We now have cooler temps, fresh snow, precip falling as white stuff even down in valley, in fact as I said in the heading, it looks like the start of a proper winter.

Overnight temps fell so that on the way to the hill it was -1 at the base and about -3 on top, staying around those figures for the rest of the day. There had been a very light dusting of new snow (1 cm) and the base had shrunk to 108 cms.

In terms of openings we got Arrow and all of Lizard bowl below Tower 6, the top of Cedar bowl from Bear as far as Cruiser.but still no Cedar Ridge, Boomerang, Boom Ridge, Linda's and all the surrounding areas.

Bear was in better shape than yesterday so we had a couple of runs - still a bit icy. Bear top into Cruiser next was very interesting. They had pushed a groomer down the middle of Cruiser in response to yesterdays aweful rain crust. Where they hadn't groomer the crust had firmed up to a hard base that would support weight and would just about take an edge. Trouble was that a combination of old skier traffic and rain damage made for a very very uneven surface and although better than yesterday it was still tough skiing. North Ridge was still icy but not quite the boiler plate of yesterday and had loose snow to either side to facilitate turning. We amused ourselves in these areas until lunch.

Late morning it started snowing and although it seemed to be driving quite hard there didn't seem to be much accumulation. The forecast was just for flurries but in true Fernie fashion the snow continued and became heavier so that by close we had accumulated about 4 cm and it was puking snow.

The snow improved the afternoon skiing which was  a repeat of the morning loops into Cedar plus some Arrow/lower Bow loops in Lizard. The cooling trend had firmed up the base in Lizard just like in Cruiser so that by the afternoon all the ungroomed skiing was good and not breakable crust and the increasing amounts of snow just made the skiing really rather smooth. I guess if you got down low enough you would have found breakable crust but I didn't find any on the upper hill.

For the first time this season I found myself catching the last chair up Bear and wishing we had a few more runs left. Of course this may have had something to do with the fact that my feet were in much betteer shape thanks to the great work done overnight on my boots by Donny at Top Shelf.

It has been snowing ever since we left the hill. I had to clear about 10 cms of snow off the hot tub to be able to get in and after a great soak in the falling snow (I love hot tubs in a snow storm) about a further 5 cms have accumulated. As I look out on my deck it is still puking snow and the snow is quite light and fluffy - long live Fernie flurries. Tomorrow could be the first powder day of the season - head for the hills.

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