Sunday, March 12, 2017

Day 95 way better than In expected

It rained in the valley overnight and the deck temps of +1 which we saw last night rose to +3 by the morning as we drove to the hill. When we looked up the hill it had a rain line (official reports call this a snow line) just below the White Pass load. it was obvious to us that the place to go was the New Side and to get as high as possible which was limited by the fact tat Polar Peak stayed closed all day. During the day we almost had a sunny period (narrowly avoided thank goodness) and apart from that it was overcast with the odd flurry of grauppel with no real accumulation..

The temps on the hill set in at about +4 at the base and +2 up the hill. In the absence of any direct sunlight this meant that the snow stayed in ok shape from last night (about 8 cms of heavy Jersey Cream) but became more like soft spring skiing as the day went on.

We had expected to find good snow on top and frozen rain crust below but that was not the case. The snow on top was certainly good soft Jersey Cream but the lower mountain was soft snow taking and edge and becoming pretty mushy the lower you went particularly earlier in the day. Overall we had good skiing up top and ok skiing on the lower mountain which as I said I way better than expected,

Sunday is my drinking night so with a lot of beers under my belt the memory of the day is a bit hazy from this late perspective - here goes -
Knot Chute/Anaconda/ Bootleg glades - a good way to start in deep snow when we fully expected the crud line to hit us in Anaconda but it was the bottom of Bootleg before we felt anything at all. A great soft deep snow run with few tracks,
Skydive - the fence on Currie had just dropped so we hit across to Skydive and got 3rd and 4th tracks in which were just deep and awesome. The transition was about half way down the final pitch and was only to soft snow, and not crud as we had feared.
Cougar Glades - great skiing with many untracked lines only getting heavy towards the bottom of the left hand exit chute.
Decline - good all the way down getting a little heavy in the final pitch and an ugly surprise from the groomers on the left hand side where the groomers had dug out a deep pit to catch the unwary.
Gotta Go/ Diamond Leg Trees - a little scratchy in the choke and the just awesome heavy snow all the way down. the trees stayed good way below where we though things should have got ugly.
Lone Fir - last run before a late lunch and the snow in the chute was about as good as I have seen it. The fan underneath was very soft and mellow against the sign line on the left.
Knot Chute hike/Google Earth/ Bootleg - after lunch for reasons that are beyond me I hiked the Knot Chutes and skied the ridge line before dropping in to the top of the Tight Knot which was tight but good and soft. I cut across and hit Google earth (just above Gotta Go) from the top and it was just awesome, the ski out in Bootleg Glades was pretty good.
Stag Leap - which was a very mellow ski down most of the way getting a bit claggy  in the final pitch.
Skydive - the final run which was ok in the top and heavy low down.

Over all a very good day in conditions that held well even low down the mountain and was way better than I expected. I noticed temps at the base of +4 and at the White Pass load of + 2 which explained the good spring skiing conditions wherever we went. I have no idea what tomorrow will hold.

1 comment:

  1. Myself and a couple buddies had a great day skiing over in Cedar bowl this day. Cedar ridge was skiing way better then expected. With less crowds today we had many first tracks laps. Great day.

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