Day 56 A short report

The reason tonight's report is going to be short is that we are about to go out to watch the Ghostriders play local rivals Kimberly in the good old hockey game which happens to be the best game you can name and by a strange coincidence the best game you can name is the good old hockey game. Fortunately the conditions were more or less the same as yesterday and we skied most of the same runs so this can be quick.

There was no over night snow and on the way to the hill things were much colder at -15. The reported inversion did not in fact exist and although temps at the base got up to -7 it remained at about -14 on Polar Peak all day and as we drove away from the hill it was -9. All temps are mercury figures and there was a breeze in places today which would have pushed the wind chill lower. It was sunny at times but later clouded over and the Peak was in the clouds off and on for most of the afternoon

As a result of the temps everything remained as it was - ok up high with the snow staying in good shape and bullet hard lower down. Polar Peak was hard big bumps which took and edge and because of the wind there was some sift filling in between the bumps particularly on Papa Bear.

We went to the Old Side and found Snake Ridge still good on top and hard death cookies in the Gorby Gap and below. Kangaroo was ugly hard icy bumps as was Boom Ridge. Boomerang skied ok in the top but was refrozen crud for the last few turns before the Goat Trail. The one variation from yesterday was that we hit the Poppa chutes in Fish Bowl where the snow was soft and mostly untracked. These chutes are often skied on days of high avalanche risk on the grounds that they will not slide because of the trees. Well, today we saw that the final face before the Redtree cut out had slid pretty significantly and we were skiing old avi debris. This should be a warning to anyone thinking of crossing the boundary fence without at least carrying and avi transceiver, this can be a dangerous playground.

On the New Side Polar Peak was good with some wind sift (Papa, Grand Papa and Mama Bear as well as Spirt Bear and Crusty Clown) as was Lone Fir and the Currie Chutes. As with yesterday Touque Chutes were good and Spinal Tap was almost ok, if a bit crunchy. The one variation on yesterday's skiing was that we took the high IT out across the Knot Chutes (still very rocky) and hit Cobra Rock for the first time. The chute itself was ok but the exit chutes were very sketchy and even the easy way out to the left wasn't that easy. Nice to tick the box for Cobra for the first time this season.

Final run was Skydive which  was as it has been for about a week - ok on top turning to ugly refrozen crud in the final pitch. There was nothing particularly difficult about the final pitch it was just a bit hard on the legs as it was a straight forward test of strength to hold each turn.

That's all folks. Off to the game - go Riders go.