Day 86 we may have dodged the bullet

Keen readers will remember that last night I was worried about the warming temps and the high levels of precip forecast. Well, after today I think we may just have got away with minimal damage to the hill and in a cooling trend look forward to some seriously good snowfall over the next week. As I am typing this it is +1 on the deck and the precip is coming down as a snow/rain mix. I am optimistic that as we move into the night it will turn to full on snow and be plain sailing from then on.

Overnight the hill were reporting 10 cms of fresh which they upgraded to 20 cms before we left for the hill. On the way to the hill it was zero degrees and during the day the temp at the base rose to +1 which is what it was as we drove away in the evening. Looking around at various times during the day it seemed to be about -2 up the hill on the New Side. It snowed all day with heavy fill in hero snow which on top of last nights 20 cms and the 100 cms we have had this week gave spectacular skiing conditions which just continued to improve and fill in as the day went on.

We went to the New Side and stayed there all day. I am not going to give a blow by blow account of the various runs as they were all the same, awesome deep hero snow only lightly tracked or untracked all day. A special mention has to go to Ski Patrol again who got the Currie Bowl open almost from the outset including the Reverse Traverse and Lone Fir but with the Saddles closed all day. We got a good start in the Currie Grand Prix and grabbed untracked lines down Skydive. After that we skied (in no particular order) Cougar Glades, The Brain, Touque Chutes, Spinal Tap, Gotta Go, Diamond Leg Trees (trees between Bootleg and Diamond Back), Nameless Trees including the creek bed, Decline, Window Chutes, Tight Knot (as mellow as I have ever seen it) Triple Trees and Stag Leap, some of them more than once. As I said no point in describing the runs because they were all awesome soft deep hero snow.

It is perhaps worth mentioning two runs I didn't do and why, Polar Peak and Lone Fir. Against all odds Polar Peak was open but it was lost in the clouds all day. I have no doubt the snow there was awesome but the viz would have been very poor. Now I an always ready to go up Polar to get good snow no matter how poor the viz is if the snow available elsewhere is poor. Today when the snow everywhere was awesome with great viz skiing Polar just seemed perverse to me. I am a big fan of Lone Fir and don't mind the short hike up Cornice Ridge to get there. On a day like today when the Saddles are closed then all the traffic which would normally ski the Saddles makes for Lone Fir. Unfortunately this includes the side slippers that destroy the Saddles so quickly after opening and looking at the number of people I could see hiking the ridge each time I passed I figured Lone Fir was in for the same treatment today.

Last run of course was Skydive which we hit with high speed GS turns as soon as we were through the bumps and this was a great end to a totally awesome day's skiing where even the most gnarly lines were made easy by the deep hero snow.

Looking ahead I am hoping that the overnight temps continue to drop and the mixed precip in the valley turns to snow. I am reasonably confident that it is coming down white up the hill in any event. All forecasts show temps dropping to below zero at all times for the next few days and significant precip so with any luck we are in for a run of good powder days. This weekend is the Griz Day festival so we will be getting to the hill early tomorrow to beat what I forecast will be record crowds.