Day 59 More snow and a very good day

The only reason that the word awesome doesn't appear in the title is that there appears to be a facebook campaign against me using such a word and that with the snow forecast for tonight it might not be a good idea to run out of superlatives too soon.

We had another 17 cms overnight and it snowed during the day, I guess adding 5 cms. It was overcast with flurries most of the day and only cleared a bit in the afternoon. Temps were around -3 at the base and few degrees cooler on top. About half way through the day we suddenly got a cooling trend but that eased back and by the end of the day we were in low minus temps all over the hill. It was socked in at the top with pretty poor light all day which only got a bit better in mid afternoon and for the most part deteriorated as the snow flurries moved through.

With a load of fresh snow and the thought that Bear was down yesterday so there could be some good stuff on the Old Side, that's where we went. All the top of Cedar remained closed so we just poked around doing, Cedar Ridge ( a couple of ways) Boom guts, King Fir, Linda's, Boom Ridge and associated lines. Everything had new snow covering yesterday's tracks and the underlying deep snow from yesterday gave a great soft powder base.

After a great early morning sorting out the best lines on the Old Side in some great untracked lines we headed off to the New Side. Of course this was after dropping Kangaroo three time which skied very mellow in the top and with a hard base base lower down. In fact the only thing that was difficult there was the drop on to the cat track where the cat had cut a significant drop onto the track from above.

We went to the New Side and found Currie Bowl open but with only the low traverse going out to the top of the Big Three - anyone calling those runs the fingers please stop reading here. I got first tracks in the Brain which with all the new snow was just awesome deep powder. I was almost tempted to try the creek bed but I think it will take one more metre of snow before that becomes viable on skis.

Next time round Polar Peak was open with the usual crap visibility on top but by the time I got to Mamma Bear it was just bad and the snow was awesome smooth deep powder. I exited via Decline and Window Chutes which were deep with untracked lines but as always the choke in Windows was a bit scratchy.

Final Run before lunch I tied up with a few buddies (your mention Annabel)  and took Baby Bear (super deep soft powder) Secret Chutes ( still a lot of untracked lines) and Spinal Tap (amazingly deep in the top and ok lower down) and headed for lunch. My impression was that the New Side got a lot more snow than the Old Side where the snow plot is, perhaps twice the official figure.

After Lunch I had a quick Polar Peak in Mamma Bear and then a very nice Cougar Glades in the trees on the left side which still had untracked lines. Like yesterday I had intended to stop on the bike trail but rolled through it without even knowing it was there. It was a great deep powder tree run.

Next time the light on Polar improved slightly so I looped Grand Pappa Bear (a tricky game between the wind crust to the right and the deep powder to the left), Barely Legal ( great deep powder as no one fancies the exit chutes which were surprisingly mellow) and Spirit Bear which had a few tracks from earlier in the day but was sifted in and was awesome deep powder. I went down through Stag Leap which was easy deep tracked powder.

Last loop on White Pass I took the Knot chutes into Slim which only seemed to have two tracks in with super deep snow and the nearside Surprise Trees which were skiing pretty well considering it was late in the day.

Last rip was down Skydive with quite a few buddies, looks like the 4 o'clock Skydive club is starting to take off. As we sit here there is an Arctic high slipping down from the North and a wet Pacific system coming in from the west. If they bang in to each other above us and decide to fight for dominance we could be in for a mega Fernie system - worst case 20 cms called for, heres hoping.