Day 99 the luck of the Irish

First of all happy Paddy's Day to all my Irish buddies and everyone else claiming some Irish connection which lets face it is everyone else. The luck comes from the fact that we have just had the most awesome snow cycle which was not predicted giving us one of the best day's skiing of the season.

So, conditions. Well, last night it was raining in the valley but around midnight (so I am told) it changed to snow and was just hosing down snow when the alarm went at 7 this morning. Overnight figure gave us 24 cms of fresh but that was 6 o'clock reading. It snowed all day, easing off a little from time to time but for the most part puking snow all over the hill. Reports conflict but most agree that we had about 50 cms out of the current cycle and as I sit here typing this I am looking out of my window and it it heaving down snow at maybe an even more awesome rate than at any time during the day - tomorrow is looking pretty good.

As you would expect conditions were awesome with loads of fresh snow on the previously hard base obliterating any problems that might have been evident from previous skier activity. To be fair the rain crust could be felt in places but if you skied fast enough the float kept you well above that sort of thing. We went to the New Side on the grounds that the new openings would be on untracked snow and there would just be more terrain available.

Almost straight off the bat we had the I bowl, Knot chutes and Surprise Trees in addition to yesterday's stuff so immediatly the decision on terrain grounds alone looked good. We looped White Pass getting face shots all over in High Line Trees, Surprise Trees, the Gun Bowl and almost anywhere we went. We tended to traverse in to the Knot Chutes and dropped Fraid Knot, Slim and Jim which were all deep and hardly tracked - Tight Knot looked just too scratchy with the rain and avi activity so we left it alone.

As the day wore on we worked our way across Surprise Trees eventually ending up in Triple Trees. Although there were a few tracks in there we found great untracked lines and hit all five sections through to the ski out below Deep Sea. Next time up we found Lift line open so every loop after that included some awesome lines of soft snow under the Timber chair. Arriving at the top we found that Currie Bowl had just opened.

We skied out along Currie Powder looking for the Reverse Traverse or even the Low Traverse to be open but were disappointed. The sign line was just as low as yesterday and we spent the next four loops skiing Currie Powder looking for a change that never happened. This wasn't all bad as the skiing down was pretty good (getting a bit bumpier each time ) and after the last sign a quick cut left gave plenty of great untracked powder skiing just below the exit from Currie Creek.

Here I have to have a quick rant about poachers (skier/riders ducking the sign lines and riding the closed areas) in my opinion these people are human filth that should be publicly hung as an example to others. More importantly patrol have to divert from their main purpose in life (opening parts of the hill for me to trash) to run these morons to ground and so delay me being able to ski untracked powder - on second thoughts hanging is too good for them - rant over.

We had been thinking about a late lunch when they opened the low traverse into the Big 3 and so that was the afternoon gone with a 9-4 non stop day in deep powder. We went out to Skydive,Stag Leap and Cougar Glades. All of these had some tracks in ahead of us but also had fantastic untracked parts with well over 50 cms of accumulated snow giving continuous face shots. This was particularly true in Cougar where the trees on the left in tight sections were almost untouched.

So it was out to Skydive for a final rip with more company than I can ever remember seeing out there at that time. Although well tracked it was great soft snow and we all had face shots all the way down - kudos to Rod who beat me down today (it really isn't a race) as my legs just didn't have it in them to drive the turns in the final section.

As I said I can't believe how hard it is snowing on my deck as I am typing this - tomorrow is in danger of being the most awesome day of the season yet.