Day 90 all over the place

I am not actually talking about my skiing which has often been described as all over the place, but rather how the day rolled out which seemed to involve skiing the hill from fence to fence (and beyond) and taking one or two lines that hadn't been seen for a week or two.

We had very little snow over night but the big post skiing dump I talked about yesterday meant that the figures worked out at 15 cms of fresh in the last 24 hours, 31 in the last 48 and a base of 291- getting dangerously close to the point where we would have to get unbelievably drunk to celebrate the three metre party.

We went to the New Side and pushed out to the top of the Big 3 seeing fewer tracks as we went out. We hit Skydive which had one or maybe two tracks drifting in and out of the trees on the left hand side so that we really had first tracks in the main run. It was good soft bumps with a covering of new snow and although the lower section looked like it should have been ugly with trashed refrozen powder, it skiied pretty well as long as you had the speed to stay on top.

Stag Leap next time round was untracked through the trees but had a couple of tracks in the run itself. Good skiing all the way down but with the same problem in the lower section as Skydive. Next loop I had a look in Corner Pocket which still had the tires exposed despite having only opened a few minutes earlier. High Saddle needed a couple of big jumps on the left hand shoulder to get in but after that it was simple edge to edge through the chute. The snow underneath was spectacular soft untracked powder and the exit via Easter right side was only just a little less in terms of awesomeness.

We cut across to the Old Side to try Snake Ride which had been closed for a couple of days and were not disappointed. We had two loops out before lunch, the first on the Gorby shoulder to the right of Steep and Deep which was steep and mostly untracked. Next we went out in to the near side Fish bowl where there were loads of deep untracked north facing lines before it was time to cut out right into a very chunky and warm lower Redtree.

Returns on the loop both times were through Kangaroo (hard sketchy bumps in the top and very heavy in the second section). Also through Boomerang and the Goat trail which were respectively bumpy but getting softer and very hard and bumpy. Lunch.

After lunch it was back to the New Side to discover that viz had improved and Polar peak was open. I did Grand Pappa Bear, Barely Legal and Pappa Bear cutting back to the chair each time and finding them tracked but with soft deep snow. After that it was time to move on through my chute into Mamma Bear which was the deepest skiing up to that point. I decided to hike up to Lone Fir but found the chute closed - later I was told it was for coverage as the chute was mostly blue ice. I dropped a rather sketchy Cornice Chute before heading out to Stag Leap for a fairly soft run in the lightly tracked snow.

Next time round it was back up the Peak for Grand Pappa Bear (still plenty of soft untracked snow) Barely Legal (still great soft deep snow even in the exit chutes) and then Baby Bear which was particularly steep and deep on the left up against the rock band. We dropped to base via Concussion which was pretty good skiing on a hard base with the odd bits of soft.

This just gave time for the final Skydive rip. For the first two thirds of the run it was pretty uneventful  but the final part was very chunky and hard work which was not really what you needed at the end of the day.

A great day skiing with even better drinking with buddies in the Griz Bar. Nothing much in the outlook for the weekend but a forecast of the next snow cycle starting Monday and going in to Tuesday so that works alright for me - let's see.