Day 124 an enforced Old Side day

Today we only had the Old Side available to us as the New Side was closed for a days filming of the new Liam Neeson movie Hard Powder. The hill was packed out with trailers and support vehicles and it all looked very exciting but for those of us who were not involved it was just another ski day. The hill compensated the day ticket skiers by only charging them half price for their skiing as less than half the hill was available. We season pass holders are still waiting to see what we will be given for giving up half the hill for a day but I am sure it will be something generous.

The temp on the deck first thing was -5 and on the way to the hill it had warmed up to -1. Conditions were bluebird to start with before going to hazy sunshine for most of the morning before going back to bluebird mid afternoon and finally overcast and snowing for the last couple of runs - all in all a very mixed day. Temps did rise during the day but not that much so that by the end of the day it was only +2 at the Boomerang load and +3 as we drove through downtown on the way home.

They were only calling about a couple of cms of snow overnight on top of about 8 cms yesterday but when we got to the top of Bear the north facing slopes seemed to have a lot more and not heavily tracked. We spent most of the morning looping Cedar Ridge from Boogie to King Fir and found lots of deep soft powder. Lower down there appeared to be some ugly avi debris but when you hit it the lumps were soft and mellow and very easy skiing although the sight of the debris did play tricks with your head. We grabbed first tracks in Boom Ridge which was soft and a bit mushy on a scratchy base.

Returns on our loops were always through Kangaroo which was soft and mostly untracked and to my mind skiing about as well as it has all season. We also returned through Boomerang which was soft chopped up mush on an ice base and made for some very variable skiing. We went for a late lunch at the ever excellent Big Bang Bagels .

At lunch I bumped into my buddy Brad who told me that all morning he had been skiing by the fence on the Blueberry sign line  (Snake Ridge was closed so that was as near to it as we could get) and that it was very good. So I spent the rest of the afternoon looping just inside the sign line, Kangaroo and Boomerang. Kangaroo and Boomerang was just as in the morning but the sign line was good. Of course things were a little more tracked up later in the day but there were still untracked lines to be had near the Blueberry fence and chutes lower down were good tight skiing although a bit icy in places.

In the absence of Skydive we had time to finish on Boom Ridge which was still soft on a scratchy base and then back up Boomerang Chair to Bear Chutes which were ok but full of soft avi debris. It wasn't Skydive but then it wasn't a bad way to finish. Tonight they are calling for another 10 cms of fresh and as I am typing this I can hear graupel rattling down on the deck, lets see what happens.