Yesterday I posed the question "How many days have we had where the conditions have been bluebird (great viz in the direct sunlight and pretty poor every where else) no snow ( we had no snow over night) temps super cold ( well down into double figures) and everything staying bullet hard (nothing even began to soften today) well the answer to that somewhat rhetorical question was - at least one more after today.
Yes, today we just had more of the same. It was -16 on the deck when I woke up and -14 on the drive to the hill. No new snow and the conditions were totally bluebird. Everything was rock hard all over the hill and even in the direct sunlight nothing showed the slightest inclination to soften. During the day temps rose but remained at well below zero all over the hill and even in the direct sunlight we were still looking at about zero. A wind sprung up later in the day particularly on the New Side and although this was good for giving us a little (very little) wind sift it did mean that with wind chill temps had to be at around -10 all over the hill.
We went to the Old Side and had our usual poke round Bear, Bow, Arrow and North Ridge. We were a little slow off the mark today due to the excellent party in the Kodiak Lounge last night with the lefties and ticket checkers who were celebrating something but I am not sure what - perhaps it was just the fact that it was Tuesday. We tried a couple of runs through Cedar Centre to try the ungroomed stuff in the trees which was rather chunky and not much good. Finally we went out to Fish Bowl again where it had been so good yesterday and found it was still ok but no more than dust on crust although it didn't look like anyone else had been out there and the ski out through Red Tree remained good. We decamped to the New Side.
Nothing much was happening on the New Side although it looked like Polar Peak was about to open. I was told later in the day that it had been open first thing and what we saw was it shutting down, but there you go. Several White Pass loops helped to while the time away and each time we dropped the Gun Bowl which was hard ugly tracked up ice and as such good fun challenging skiing. High Line and Quite Right were slick and fast but ok. We ran to base for lunch via the usual Currie Powder, Trespass Trail, Diamond Back, Summer Road and Lower Sib Ridge route. lunch was at the excellent Big Bang Bagels which is fast becoming my favourite lunch stop when we don't have sandwiches.
After lunch it was more New Side loops always via Gun Bowl in the run back to White Pass and alternating Currie Powder and Down Right in the run to base which were both very fast but interesting in the dreadful light you get in shaded areas on a bluebird day.
For last run my buddy Brad had an inspiration and we went back to the Old Side and hit Fish Bowl one last time. We stayed hard left and got fresh tracks in dust on crust even at that late stage of the day. The final Fish pitch and lower Red Tree were both really nice soft snow with some untracked lines to be found. We got to Bear with 35 seconds left on the clock and took a final run out to the Easter sign line which had a couple of good turns and quite a few not so good. The Freeway gully had some blow in on an icy base but you had to bail before the final pitch and finding an exit wasn't easy.
Beers in the Griz and an early night. Anyone want to bet that I am not going to copy and paste again tomorrow ?
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
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