Day 7 at least it didn't rain much while we were skiing

When the best thing you can say about the day is that "at least it didn't rain much while we were skiing" then you get an idea that the conditions were not exactly champagne. Overnight temps stayed high and it was +4 on the way to the hill. During the day we had temps of  +7 all over the hill , or maybe more, and even as we drove away tonight it was +3 so everything was going to even more mush. We had some light drizzle around the middle of the day but that was the extent of the precip and hence our great delight.

During the night it rained, and I mean it really rained. This was confirmed by the damage that had been done to the hill and the fact that a rain line was just about discernible at the very top of the Lizard Headwall which was way higher than we were ever going to get today. On the official web site this morning it showed a base of 83 cms which would roughly accord with what I would expect to see after a night of rain on the hill. All the boards at the lifts showed 92 cms and when I asked why this was I was told that this was the number the lifties had been told to put down. Tonight when I got in I went the official web site and was surprised to see that the base was now recorded at 92 cms. So what happened ? a genuine error in this mornings recording, an accumulation of 9 cms on a day with no precip or someone trying to gerrymander the figures  - I leave it to you guys to make up your own minds.

As we rode the Elk ( Timber is in it's third day down for repair and so no New Side again) we noticed the reason for the crappy conditions. Someone has chopped down the underwear tree by the lift where we throw various under garments as an offering to the Griz. Crappy conditions will continue until such time as a new tree can be found and new offerings made. This is a bit of a young person's thing as no one wants to see old pairs of my Y fronts thrown onto a tree so come on guys and girls, agree a tree and get sacrificing.

There was a little more open today with the High Lizard Traverse on one side and the High Cedar Traverse on the other but only as far as the far side of Cruiser open. In between Boomerang, Linda's Bear Chutes etc. were still all closed for coverage. This was desperately limited terrain but the groomers were ok and the off piste we could get to was heavy spring skiing. The result of the rain was that we were through to bare earth in many places and the skiing could at best be described as poor.

We invented a loop which took us up Bear and then skied Bow Trees and the ungroomed areas of Bow off to the skiers right. Up Bear again and drop the chutes at the top into Cedar, cross Alpine Way and then in the trees down to Cedar Centre and Haul Back. Lower Linda's to Boom Chair and then track across to the Sunny Side shoulder and drop that to Bear and begin again. The loop took about and hour and with the only alternative skiing groomers (too horrible to contemplate) that is what we did all morning and I did all afternoon.

Never confuse the fact that because the terrain is limited you won't do much skiing. On today's limited terrain I had just over 6 hours of hard skiing, mostly off groomers. That what you can do with limited terrain if you put your mind to it. The skiing was actually soft spring skiing higher up and heavy slow mush lower down made all the more interesting by bushes, trees, twigs and alders making route decisions so much more interesting. This was particularly true on Sunny Side which I guess was technically closed for skiing but the signs were so far in you were committed by the time you saw them.

As I am typing this it is raining hard again at plus temps and the hill won't be able to take much more of this. The good news is that we are due a cool down tomorrow night with maybe some snow so fingers crossed. Tonight after beers with buddies in the bar we had our first hot tub of the season on the back deck which was just perfect. Time for a glass of wine and see what tomorrow brings.