No point in getting carried away, today wasn't awesome or anything like that but did continue an improving trend if you were prepared to used your brain to work out what was happening and you had the energy to take advantage of it - if not you probably would have had a pretty poor day. In particular, considering it was a Saturday the crowds were missing - I hope that was nothing to do with my rather down beat reports of the last few days, but if it was then the truth never hurt anyone.
Overnight not much appeared to have happened and we were relying on the opening of new terrain and the flurries forecast for today to give us the improved skiing. In the event it froze hard overnight so that anything skied yesterday and not groomed over night was ugly and rutted hard ice skiing. Temps were around zero at the base as we started and it was raining. All day we had hard ice pellet flurries which sometimes came all the way to the base and sometimes changed to rain turning back to ice a little way up the hill. The result was to give some ok graupel higher up but some very varied conditions lower down and just plain mush at the base by afternoon.
We went to the New Side as we had reports that the Old Side was pretty ugly which I could well believe. We took a loop back through White Pass which confirmed what we thought which was that the groomers were ok but where stuff had been skied yesterday (and most of what would have been new stuff such as Gun Bowl, Lift Line, Surprise Trees, I bowl, Anaconda, Zig Zag etc. remained closed) it was ugly, rock hard tracked up skiing.
Currie bowl opened with the strong recommendation to stay on the groomers which for obvious reasons we decided to ignore. With everything beyond Currie Powder closed the only "off piste" was Currie Glades which were great. The rain had beaten the surface flatish and with no traffic yesterday or the day before it had frozen hard and smooth but just about taking an edge. The new snow/ice falling on top provided a bit more of a soft skiing surface and the over all effect was ok. Gilmar Gully upper and lower sections to the base were much the same but with some entertaining death cookies pushed in but the groomers from the cat track and getting a bit soft in the last few turns.
We tended to loop the above with variations (Currie Glades provide many different routes down) for most of the morning. Just before lunch I was struck with the idea that the Big 3 would be in much the same state as Currie Glades if we could only get to them. We cut hard left under the last closure sign in Currie (we never poach) and then traversed out to the trees as hard as we could. It was then a case of a side step traverse up through Cougar Glades until we got to Stag Leap. Despite the traverse being horrible breakable crust due to the snow falling off the trees the run was, as anticipated a smooth, undulating firm base taking and edge with a covering of today's snow and needless to say untracked. We had a great run and went to lunch.
In the afternoon I went back and just did loops of Currie Glades (every way possible) before cutting in to either Stag Leap or on a couple of occasions Skydive which just required a little more work. I think people who have never tried to cut in to the Big 3 from the skiers right would be amazed just how far up you are in the run when you use the summer bike trail to get in. I would estimate in both cases you only lose about 20/25% of the run giving loads left in which to have fun. All afternoon the only tracks we saw were our own from the repeat trips giving plenty of fresh lines each time.
Last run of course was Skydive which although curtailed was excellent up until the last couple of turns which were starting to get bit mushy. Loads of pre Paddy's Day beer and fingers crossed for a cooling trend and some serious snow overnight.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Day 97 just getting a bit better
Yes, lets not get carried away by today, it wasn't awesome or fantastic or good (or legendary to use the official jargon) it was just better than yesterday and just about ok skiing for this time of year.
During the night it rained hard again in the valley and on the way to the hill it was +3. The good news was that the forecast for today had been revised so that we had no precip in the forecast and were even supposed to get some sun (which we did) with clouds and and temps going up to +7. We also had a 1 cm dusting of snow on the upper mountain which is obviously what occured towards the end of the precip cycle at some early hour of the morning.
We went to the New Side and found that only Heartland/Highline guts were open just like yesterday. The difference today was that off the groomers the snow seemed to have firmed up under that 1 cm covering. My own theory is that the rain soaked way down into the snow yesterday so when it cooled we effectively had a rain crust but about a metre thick so that you always skied in the crust. The result was that the ungroomed stuff was soft and floaty even when it was obviously only covered with the lightest of dustings. The whole thing had the strange feeling of skiing powder which quite clearly it wasn't
For a couple of hours or more we looped variations and different lines of Highline Trees, Milky Way Trees, Puff Trees right and all the interlinking runs. They were all as described above - soft and floaty on this rather strange base. As the morning progressed things seemed to get softer which was not surprising as most of what was open on the New Side was south facing. We decided to cross to the Old Side via Deep Sea which like yesterday was skiing pretty well at that time as soft bumps.
On the Old Side we found that Lizard Bowl across as far as Easter was open but Emily's was closed for racing so no recreational skier could actually get to the bottom of Haul Back - a strange decision given how little terrain was actually open. We had a couple of runs in the steeper parts of Bow and found the snow soft but chunky. Before lunch we took a quick run down Kangaroo which was soft but with the right exit on to the cat track now completely bare.
After lunch we had a few runs around the Arrow/Bow areas in Lizard together with the lower chutes which were starting to get quite soft and heavy. After that I just went for loops (a further 7 in all) of North Ridge which was ok on the surface and hard underneath and Kangaroo which just got more mellow as the afternoon wore on. By the end of the day I was taking Kangaroo as a series of fast GS turns with no need to take account of the bumps which had been flattened by the temps and in any event were so soft they could be ignored.
Tomorrow may well be a different story and if things cool down as forecast the Roo could well take it's revenge for the lack of respect shown during the course of this afternoon. Beers in the Griz and a hot tub were the order of the day.
Forecasts are for cooling temps and snow (perhaps in significant amounts) before the weekend is over. I have my hopes but when you have lived in Fernie as long as I have you learn to treat these forecasts as no more that a best guess by the forecasters - about as accurate as when they choose their lottery numbers. Tomorrow is another day.
During the night it rained hard again in the valley and on the way to the hill it was +3. The good news was that the forecast for today had been revised so that we had no precip in the forecast and were even supposed to get some sun (which we did) with clouds and and temps going up to +7. We also had a 1 cm dusting of snow on the upper mountain which is obviously what occured towards the end of the precip cycle at some early hour of the morning.
We went to the New Side and found that only Heartland/Highline guts were open just like yesterday. The difference today was that off the groomers the snow seemed to have firmed up under that 1 cm covering. My own theory is that the rain soaked way down into the snow yesterday so when it cooled we effectively had a rain crust but about a metre thick so that you always skied in the crust. The result was that the ungroomed stuff was soft and floaty even when it was obviously only covered with the lightest of dustings. The whole thing had the strange feeling of skiing powder which quite clearly it wasn't
For a couple of hours or more we looped variations and different lines of Highline Trees, Milky Way Trees, Puff Trees right and all the interlinking runs. They were all as described above - soft and floaty on this rather strange base. As the morning progressed things seemed to get softer which was not surprising as most of what was open on the New Side was south facing. We decided to cross to the Old Side via Deep Sea which like yesterday was skiing pretty well at that time as soft bumps.
On the Old Side we found that Lizard Bowl across as far as Easter was open but Emily's was closed for racing so no recreational skier could actually get to the bottom of Haul Back - a strange decision given how little terrain was actually open. We had a couple of runs in the steeper parts of Bow and found the snow soft but chunky. Before lunch we took a quick run down Kangaroo which was soft but with the right exit on to the cat track now completely bare.
After lunch we had a few runs around the Arrow/Bow areas in Lizard together with the lower chutes which were starting to get quite soft and heavy. After that I just went for loops (a further 7 in all) of North Ridge which was ok on the surface and hard underneath and Kangaroo which just got more mellow as the afternoon wore on. By the end of the day I was taking Kangaroo as a series of fast GS turns with no need to take account of the bumps which had been flattened by the temps and in any event were so soft they could be ignored.
Tomorrow may well be a different story and if things cool down as forecast the Roo could well take it's revenge for the lack of respect shown during the course of this afternoon. Beers in the Griz and a hot tub were the order of the day.
Forecasts are for cooling temps and snow (perhaps in significant amounts) before the weekend is over. I have my hopes but when you have lived in Fernie as long as I have you learn to treat these forecasts as no more that a best guess by the forecasters - about as accurate as when they choose their lottery numbers. Tomorrow is another day.
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