Sunday, March 4, 2018

Day 93 the best run ever ?

Today I had the run of the season and maybe the run of any season but more of that later. After yesterday the crowds had subsided to normal weekend numbers and whilst a little bit busier than a normal Sunday there was only one major line up all day and by the last run the hill was as quiet as I would expect it to be on a Sunday.

It was surprisingly cold over night and temps on the way to the hill of -11. They were calling for 4 cms of snow over night but I really couldn't see it myself and things looked much the same as yesterday. The day started as blue bird day which was pretty good as it allowed them to heli bomb all the ridge lines before we got started and therefore get everything open as quickly as possible. Luckily it clouded over during the morning before the sun could have any adverse affects on the skiing surface and by the afternoon we were getting some light flurries, even if they weren't accumulating. Temps warmed and then cooled during the day and as we drove away it was -1 in the valley with most of the snow in good shape.

We went to the New Side and found that not only was Currie Bowl open but so was the Reverse Traverse, the Saddles were closed so we headed out to the top of the Big 3 where someone had found and resurrected the ski patrol sign from a couple of months ago saying that the bottom of the Big 3 was "not awesome". A good ploy by someone to keep the weekend crowds out but I am not sure it had much effect. We were aware that the lower sections of the Big 3 had been trashed (we trashed them yesterday) so we had to make other plans. We looked into Touque chutes and it was untracked and that was the run referred to at the head of this blog. It was thigh deep and we didn't see tracks until we dropped out on to Freeway. It was the run of the season and perhaps any season with thigh deep powder choking you all the way down.

Next time round we hit Decline which was tracked but was still very deep powder with many untracked lines. We then got word that Snake Ridge had opened so we dropped Touque Chutes but pushed very far right to get untracked snow and then had Spinal Tap which was very deep and lightly tracked with the fallen tree still navigable if you really ducked hard. We  went to the Bear load for the Snake experience.

The traverse out was crowded and I dropped the Curved Ball/Steep and Deep shoulder which in truth was just a steep soft run. I held the trees on the Steep and Deep right which were untracked before exiting in the right hand chute which was still full of soft deep snow. When we got to the haul back we met the largest line up I have ever seen there. It was huge and took a good 15 minutes before we could get lifted out and try the Kangaroo which skied much the same as usual with a bit more snow. Clearly we weren't going to go back to the Haul Back Load (paying just to stand around always seems such a pointless exercise) so we looped Boom Ridge, Alligator Glades, Boomerang and Buck Shot before heading to lunch. All of these were in excellent shape with lots of soft snow on soft bumps and really just very nice mellow skiing.

After lunch I just hit New Side loops -
High Saddle/Easter - with the saddles now open it was great soft skiing through the Saddle and particularly below. Easter was deep chopped up powder and as such was good skiing.
Cougar Glades - still many untracked lines and a great exit through the old logging trail.
Nameless Trees - very deep in the trees and just awesome in the creek bed. This time I worked the trees on the left after the dead fall and got some good tight tree skiing all the way down to the cat track.
The Brain- well why not on an afternoon of tree skiing and it was soft and untacked in many places so that we didn't have to exit until the very bottom of Skydive.

After a 2 minute rip of White Pass it was time to go to Skydive. Just the two of us there tonight but a great rip on what was very mellow snow considering the time of day. The Griz Bar was once again jumping with a bunch of pumped up skiers but being Sunday it was mostly locals and the atmosphere was awesome. As it was my drinking night I had a few beers hence the rambling nature of tonight's blog. Some more snow forecast but I am worried about the forecast temps.


No comments:

Post a Comment