Day 90 a shorter day than usual

The reason today was a bit shorter than usual was that I had to drop a long stay guest at Cranbrook airport this morning at 9 so it was 10:30 before I got back to the hill and got skiing. In the event this was not so bad as Timber chair had it's usual powder day break down as soon as the first few chairs were loaded and it was not back up and running until about 10 minutes before I hit the hill. This meant that my mid morning start on the New Side was rather like an early morning start as far as the untracked powder was concerned.

Overnight they were giving  20 cms in the last 24 hours with about 10 of that arriving overnight. Temps at the start were - 5 at the base and -2 at the finish with the temps at White Pass load staying at -5/7 all day. In other words the overnight snow stayed in great shape.

It was overcast when I arrived and the top of the hill was fairly well socked in with not great viz on Polar Peak. During the day we had flurries which were quite strong and times and must have given us a few cms of accumulation before things started to clear in the afternoon. As I said I went to the New Side and stayed there all day.

In order to meet up with Lynda I had to do a quick White Pass loop which I did as the Tight Knot and then down into the I bowl which was all deep and lightly tracked, more or less untracked in the chute.
We went up Polar where the sign on Shale Slope was flipped just as I got there. The upper part of Shale was awesome and untracked but it was hard and icy lower down even in the right hand chute. We had a few laps of Papa and Grand Papa Bear before running off through Spirit Bear where the snow was deep but slabbing quite badly.

I had intended to hit Low Saddle but got too low and had a very mellow run down Stag Leap which was soft and had untracked lines still left. Next loop we had a few more runs in Polar which was getting better with the improving viz and where the snow remained super deep and soft in the main chutes all day. We then finally made it to Low Saddle and it was so worth while. The Saddle skied very easily with no ice or rocks and the chutes to the right had untracked lines in very deep powder. We exited via Spinal Tap which was tracked but skiing about as well as I have ever seen it in the soft snow. It was so good we went back and did Low Saddle again and the chutes were still untracked if you picked a slightly different line. This time we exited to lunch through Easter Trees left and Freeway which both skied very nicely.

After a late lunch we took the High IT out to Gotta Go which had a few tracks in so we jumped the shoulder in to Google earth and had deep untracked skiing into the top of 3's which itself was soft deep snow. I hit the near trees in Bootleg Glades which I have been ignoring this season and found them untracked and deep. A few days ago my buddy Brad and I got hung up on the exit from Diseased Trees and Brad went back and found a better line. Today we tried his better line which was to hit hard left and emerge in tight cut line which was great untracked skiing in deep snow . Someone told me this is called "Little Africa" but I can't find any confirmation on this. When we looked up from the cut line we thought we could see better ways into the cut so this is something we may need to work on over the next few days. Full of confidence we went back to Siberia Ridge and dropped the choke on the left hand side which is something you can't always do. I then took the lead for White Rabbit (the trees to the right of the choke) and followed a creek bed with only one track ahead of us  so we had super deep untracked lines. It all got a bit technical lower down but I think I have spotted some better lines to try just before it spits us out a the bottom of Falling Star - more work in progress.

Last run of course was Skydive which Brad and I agreed to take easy, an agreement that lasted to about half way down the first pitch. Just to show how easy things were I skied some of the lower pitch on one leg - of course some people may think that I nearly lost it and had to pull things back by the skin of my teeth. An awesome finish to a good day.

Just off to the Pub for wings night which we must finish early as it looks like we are getting another 15/20 cms over night and loads more to come.