Craig's Report - January 22, 1999


Just another Great day

Picture 1
(Cedar Ridge with heavy snow falling)

I have probably used that title before, but it fits. The forecast 5 cm in the valley benefited from the Fernie multiplier effect to become 20 cm of light powder on the mountain. Fool that I am I didn't get out on the mountain until the afternoon and of course the powder munchers had been busy. Even tracked and cut up powder is still pretty nice stuff though and I did get more than a few unsullied turns.



 


(In Easter Bowl)

As you might expect there were avalanche closures. Currie Bowl of course as well as Upper Lizard beyond Arrow, Upper Cedar including the hut trail from the top of Bear and Snake ridge. Cedar was open from below Alpine Way (the trail into Cedar from Boom Chair) and all of Timber and Siberia was open. Strangely enough all of Easter Bowl appeared to be open even though there was no way to get into it above the Tower 6 road.

 


 


(Looking down into a Windows Chute)

Even that lower part looked delicious, but I traversed over to the rightmost Windows Chute which was lightly tracked, but very fine skiing with only a bit of the mandatory hard stuff at the pinch points.

 


(In the trees in Siberia Bowl)

Over on the White Pass lift the top was still fogged in, but the visibility was improving. On my last ride up I could actually make out the cliff face behind the top and when I was waiting for my kids school bus it looked like it might actually be clear up there. It occurred to me that a visitor last week could easily have believe that the top of White Pass was the top of the mountain. :-)

I tried a run down through the middle of Timber scouting for nice tree turns and did in fact find some nice fluffy ones. In other places though I found a lot of very small radius pointy moguls right in tight trees. I am guessing these are produced by snowboards unless there are a lot of invisible skiers on 130 cm skis out there somewhere.

Even over in the Siberia trees the tracking crew had been busy, but there is some very fine skiing in there even late in the day.

 

At 4:20 PM it is -2C at the house and the snow has stopped. They are calling for occasional snow overnight though with cooler temperatures (high -6) tomorrow.

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