Day 75 just like yesterday but a bit colder

Actually if I was feeling particularly lazy I could just leave it at the title of today's post as this describes very well what we had today. As it is things should be a bit brief as I am just about to grab a taxi down to the Park Place Pub for their excellent wings night and I don't want to be late.

Things did cool down overnight and it was -8 on the deck this morning and -6 when we arrived at the hill. This allowed quite a bit of snow making and as a result all of the ski outs on the lower mountain were much improved over yesterday. As had been the case for a couple of weeks we had no precip over night and in the lower temps things jus got harder and uglier everywhere we went. It was a bluebird day but because of the cold overnight temps nothing really softened up during the day, at least not on the New Side where I spent the afternoon. Temps at the base may have got above zero but at the Polar load it was -5 all day.

We went to the Old Side to try things out and found that Boom, Boom Ridge, Linda's, Cedar Ridge and all associated runs remained close presumably due to the boiler plate conditions. The hard refrozen crud had groomed up really nice and we ran around the groomers on Bear, Bow, Arrow, Cedar Bowl, North Ridge, Lower North Ridge, Lower Linda's etc. As I have made the point so often, all this skied really easily and smoothly, how could it do anything else when it has been smashed into submission by a 3 ton snow cat but this is not my thing. After demonstrating to ourselves than no matter how mellow the groomers were on the Old Side there was nothing challenging there we hit the New Side.

We took a White Pass loop and found that Quite Right had been groomed and skied easily as a result. Polar Peak was open and as we arrived the Shale Slope entrance was opened so in we went. In windy bluebird conditions which was sifting in snow the result was inevitable. Add to this the sign which said that there was no grooming anywhere in Currie Bowl and this included Polar Peak and you had conditions way more challenging than yesterday with slick areas all down the Coaster and very hard big bumps just taking an edge and rocks all over the place in Shale Slope. Under the lift it was hard icy crust skiing. The good news was that hardly anyone else seemed interested in skiing it.

We did two challenging loops of Polar and headed to lunch via the ungroomed Currie Powder, Trespass Trail, Diamond Back, Summer Road, Lower Sib Ridge and the Falling Star ski out. Some great work had been done there particularly on the lower section with the new made snow and as a result the ski out was just tricky, rather than near impossible like yesterday.

In the afternoon it was back up White Pass where we put a loop in through the Gun Bowl and then Highline, both of which were ungroomed bumps and as a result pretty well shook the fillings out of our teeth on the way down. After that it was two Polar loops and then  a run to base in conditions which were getting even harder in Shale Slope and really very slick in Currie Powder - otherwise it was the morning's route. Back up for 4 more loops of Polar through Shale Slope and the lift line which just continued to get more testing with every run - great fun. A quick run back to White Pass along a very fast Trespass Trail and there was just time for another very icy Gun Bowl/Highline loop (much harder than in the early afternoon) before a run to base as described above in still hard icy conditions but at least with ok coverage.

Beers in the Griz and now off to the pub for wings night. The skiing was actually very enjoyable on the New Side when we got away from the groomers and very, very tough which I know from a number of people's point of view would disqualify the skiing from being fun, whilst in my view it is exactly that which makes it so.

Tomorrow my Irish guest have asked if they can do the blog and if this comes off I wash my hands of anything posted just for the day.