Monday, March 3, 2014

Day 5 A full on powder day

It's true, despite some signs to the contrary this morning we had a very full on powder day today with all the indications being for something better tomorrow. So I had  better start with the story of the conditions before talking about the runs that we had today.
It snowed over night and official figure gave us about 13 cms overnight on top of the 3 we got yesterday which felt about right. It snowed all day sometimes harder than others and unofficial figures from my ski patrol buddies say that we may have had 8/10 cms of snow during the day. The best news is that it is still snowing hard out on the deck so tomorrow could be a pretty spectacular days skiing.
We had been promised a warm up this morning but temps on the deck while we drank coffee and on the way to the hill read -14 which didn't really seem to confirm this. Once at the hill we found that there was a big inversion and upper mountain temps were a good 8 degrees warmer than the base all day. So with the warm up that took place during the day we drove back from the hill with a temp of -10 and temps up the hill of a little below freezing. This meant that snow came down in many and various forms during the day ranging from ice pellets to huge flakes and all points in between but the important thing is that it did snow and the snow accumulated really well. Conditions on all runs improved throughout the day as the base was supplemented but the new snow.
We went to the New Side and initially found Currie Bowl closed so we had several runs back through Highline, Heartland, Surprise trees etc all skiing really nicely in the fresh powder. They dropped the fence on Anaconda and I found the first chute over the hump full of soft snow as were the trees on the near side of Bootleg Glades and even the ski out down to Timber Chair. When we got back to White Pass top they had opened Currie Bowl and that was it for the rest of the Morning through to a very late lunch -
Stag Leap - great through the trees but still finding bottom in the mid section
The Brain - first time in the tight trees this year and the new snow made for some very mellow tree skiing.
Skydive - the snow was starting to build up and it was just possible to get down with fast GS turns staying on top.
Cougar Glades - by then the snow had made the tree skiing really easy and the glades could be taken at full speed.
Decline/Window Chutes - just getting better in the deeper snow.
Somewhere in there they opened Polar Peak which was a run of two halves. The top was poor viz, hard ice bumps and wind slab whilst the lower section was deep untracked snow, you just had to earn your turns.


There were hardly any people on the hill and even where you hadn't been lucky enough to get first tracks there was still good snow to be had and the hill was repairing about as fast as we could ski it. We took a late lunch so afternoon skiing was curtailed to put it mildly.


After lunch I headed up Polar peak and found it much as before. A traverse and hike out to Lone Fir showed the chute to be full of soft snow and then a traverse across Easter bowl to Spinal Tap found that creek bed equally full of snow.
A quick White Pass loop just to pass the time was followed by the traditional Skydive rip at the end of the day. By this time the new snow had built up so that most of Skydive could be taken in wide GS turns at speed staying on top in best full on powder traditions - a great end to a great day. As I look out it's still snowing so tomorrow could be better still.

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear you finally got some pow. Missed your blog, great to hear you guys are back to a new normal.

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