Day 91 wet and windy

First of all apologies for last night it was a very good party. Tonight's report may be a bit brief as we have more friends round but I am taking the precaution of typing this before any significant quantities of alcohol get consumed.

Overnight it snowed and we all got very excited because of the 20+cms of snow that everyone had been talking about. In the event they called 11 cms overnight which was probably right at the snow plot but the description of it as a "power alert" this morning was probably stretching reality a bit more than was credible. The snow on top was very heavy and wet and at the White Pass load it was pure elephant snot right from the start. The lower mountain was rain affected mush until later in the day when it became refrozen crud where it had been skied and crust where it hadn't.

On the way to the hill it was raining in a zero temp which clearly meant that the precip had to be coming out of a warm air mass. We obviously went to the New Side to get height but the rain line was almost up to the White Pass load and got higher during the day. I haven't spoken to anyone who tried the Old Side but I imagine it would have been low and wet. It would appear that my view was shared in official quarters as despite me being on a very early chair there were loads of tracks in White Pass which suggests to me that the pay for powder groups had been there rather than in their usual haunts on the Old Side presumably because the conditions over there were just too crap. Let's hope this isn't the start of a trend - don't get me started.

Lift Line was very heavy in the top and pure elephant snot in the last two  turns. Currie was closed so we spent the morning looping Knot Chutes, Gun Bowl, Pillow Talk, Surprise Trees (several times) and other area in White Pass. The viz was poor in the top and the snow was heavy on a hard base but just about ok skiing. Temps hung in at around zero on the upper mountain and warmed to +4 at the base. It was wet snow on top all morning which I guess would have been rain below but we didn't think it was a good idea to drop and find out.

Mid morning they opened Curried bowl but we hung back and had three loops in Anaconda which was soft but very mushy with some huge self created wet snow sloughs. We got tired of looping back down Trespass trail and as the rain appeared to have slackened we hit Diamond Back which was ok on a firm base in tracked up mush. Last run before lunch we went out and found only the low traverse open in Currie so we took Alpha Centauri which was soft and untracked in the top and rather mushy after the trees.

After lunch we started dropping Puff every loop on the New Side as it was soft chopped up crud on a not too firm base. Our afternoon loops were -
1-2-3s/Gilmar Trail - very good wind sift in the top (the wind start blowing very seriously in White Pass from early after noon) and a bit heavy low down. The ski out was smooth and soft.
Concussion - as the rain had stopped the surface was starting to set up a little in the chute but mostly ok,
Easter Bowl - a very weird experience in that we had untracked snow which skied like powder but was clearly some kind of heavy melted snow, good GS turns all the way down
1-2-3s - like before it was good wind sift in the top but setting up as hard crunch in 3s.
Skydive - last run which was crust down to about half way and very technical as a result. Below that it softened an by the final turns we were getting good old fashioned ACL ripping mush.

All in all an ok day in very testing conditions dominated by the warm temps and heavy mushy snow. We had new snow but no way could it be described as powder. Everywhere was heavy snow on a firm base, There is more precip on the way. let's see what it comes down as.