March 06, 2000

Better, but please send more.

There was some more snow overnight and it left a couple of centimeters in the driveway and a promise of more up top. I couldn't get out until about two o'clock and feeling a bit out of sorts and tired (I just can't seem to adjust my night owl ways to the reality of kids getting up for school) I headed over to Snake in search of a freshie pick me up. It looked great, but the promises the smooth surface wrote couldn't be honored by the crunchy crust just a few centimeters beneath and my determination to make free flying powder turns just turned into a bouncy flounder. As I rode up the Haul Back, I schemed about the deliciously nasty phrases I could use in this report.

North Ridge was improved over yesterday if for no other reason than the visibility was better, allowing you to differentiate the boiler plate from the soft mounds easier. There was also a significant increase in the soft to hard area percentage. Watching some poor souls crunch their way down Boomerang as I rode up, pretty much convinced me of the folly of off piste skiing, but I decided to subject myself to Sunnyside as a final proof of misery. Perhaps it was because my mind was more in tune with reality or how remarkably undisturbed the snow was on this normally main route, but I actually had a pretty good run despite the rough stuff below.

This encouraged me to give Easter Bowl a shot. Well, just the bottom of it, for I was too lazy to climb. The lower center glades were essentially unmarked and while the crust was ever present, I was starting to enjoy the stuff and even managed a composed trip down Freeway by staying to the side and out of the scraped stuff in the center.

My mood was thus much improved when I got off the Timber Chair and promptly speared a mogul disguised as a drift (okay I wasn't really watching where I was going) and was ejected from my ski and launched head first down the tree infested slope. Dark evil thoughts again bubbled through my brain as I crawled up the slope for my artistically planted ski and pole, but once I was reassembled the Puff trees proved to be quite reasonable with pointy but soft moguls.

Up top everything it was still quite soft even where mogulled and one could only think how lovely the upper part of the still closed Currie Bowl might be. On occasion when upper Currie is closed, they will open the bottom by way of Anaconda Glades and so it was today. This very black diamond run (I think it should have two) is hardly a general access route and while there were lots of tracks in Currie, I didn't see a soul during my trip down. It was kind of neat to stop in the middle of this big bowl and just look around, be surrounded by solitude and silence right in the center of the ski area. The snow was great down to just above the gully, but then the crunchies were back underneath. The gentle mogul field on the skiers left of the gully was interesting, as the frozen moguls were almost completely hidden by the smooth new covering.

I finished up by hiking up Siberia Ridge and skiing down Morning Glory. This was pretty well tracked out, but still very, very nice for a surprisingly long way down. The Falling Star flats below the switch back had a fair amount of the slick soft mix though. So in the end I had some pretty nice runs. The key seemed to be to pick your spot and mind set.

At 7:20 PM it is -3 C and snowing lightly at the house.