Day 57 plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

Hey, bet none of you thought I could speak French, actually I had it beaten into me (quite literally) at school back in the 60's and always knew it would come in handy one day. What it means is that the more things change the more they stay the same. This is how it was today where the weather changed a fair bit as did the available terrain but what we ended up with was much the same as we have had all week. But first a rant .....

Not the first time I have ranted on this subject but circumstances seem to suggest another rant is long overdue. The target of my rant today is people who insist on playing "their" music out loud on the hill and in the environs. Now, I have no problem with people who want to listen to their music through head sets or ear plugs. This is not my thing as it I think it deprives me of a vital sense (hearing) and on a number of occasions the noise of someone behind of above me had allowed me to turn away and avoid a nasty accident but that is a matter of personal choice and anyone who wants to do this is welcome to, in  my view.

My problem rests with the growing number of people who think they have the right to inflict their "music" on others whether they want to hear it or not by playing it out loud from some device secreted about their body. If you want to hear it fine - it is the height of ignorant rudeness to inflict this on others. Only today I was forced to take a White Pass chair to the sound of the music genre described as rap (I always feel that the 'c' is silent in the title of this genre) when I would have much rather slit my eyeballs with rusty razor blades given the choice - rant over.

On the way to the hill it was -4 and -4 on the way back. The hill had valley cloud so that everything up to Bear Top was socked in and giving off an ice mist. Temps if anything were slightly colder up top. We skied the Old Side still with the Haul Back broken down and looped Bear, North Ridge, Lower Linda's Cruiser, Cedar Centre and connecting runs. They all were ok hard icy groomers with very poor viz as we were in the valley cloud for most of the time. With this amount of cloud cover nothing softened and even when the cloud burned off after lunch the parts of the hill that weren't in shadow were just subject to so little sun that they also remained hard and bumpy. In summary the hill got hard and icy last night and nothing that happened today did anything to soften it.

We went across to the New Side and as anticipated we broke through the cloud tops about half way up White Pass and to make things even better found Polar Peak to be open - even in the sun the teps at Polat load were -3 and way lower with wind chill at about Tower 8. Only the Coaster was open but we looped it three times and it was slick and with some death cookies low down but not too bad. We ran to base through Currie Powder as everything else in Currie remained closed and the light got really bad low down but that was just part of the fun. Gilmar Trail skied slightly better than yesterday which means we upgraded the status to just plain ugly.

We went back up Polar Peak for two more runs as the views in the bluebird conditions were just too good to pass up on. The run to base this time through Currie Powder was improved as the cloud was dissipating and we had slightly better light. We had lunch at the ever excellent Big Bang Bagels - if you haven't had their Mr Fernie with added bacon on an onion and garlic bagel then you simply haven't lived.

After lunch we did a quick tour round the Old Side in much improved light but still no soft snow so we were restricted to the groomers in Cedar and Bear. By now it was late afternoon and we headed to the New Side only to find things much worse than this morning with the sparse snow scraped off and we were down to blue ice in many places. Heartland, Polar Coaster, Currie Powder and Gilmar Trail were just s few of the runs that we found had deteriorated to sheet ice in our three laps that we completed.

We went for beer and are now having a quiet evening after the most brutal weeks skiing on record. We have to hope that the snow in the forecast actually materialises and we get some respite. Lynda heads back to the UK for a couple of weeks tomorrow so I will have to fend for myself (actually my buddy Simon who is staying might help here) and when she comes back we usually get some snow so fingers crossed.