February 15, 2001

Missed the big one again, but still good


Feb 16, 2001 Addendum

While conditions are still much better, at least for now, than before yesterday's snow, I was surprised by the amount of degeneration in just one day. There still is soft snow, but also lots of hard scraped areas and the pebbles and dirt have started to reappear already. It was cold, but not brutally so and is currently (15:30) -10 C at the house.
Original Report: It seemed so promising last night. Environment Canada was predicting 15 cm for Sparwood, which in a normal year surely should have meant 30 or more up on the hill. What's more the Calgary television weather was talking about closed highways and specifically mentioned Sparwood and Fernie as having the potential for heavy snowfall. Finally when we were going to bed around 12:30 it was snowing heavily - a real Fernie snowfall at last. How disappointing then to find a mere two or three centimeters in the driveway this morning and the hill variously reporting only 6 to 9 cm farther up. To add insult to injury it turns out that Kimberley bagged 30 fresh overnight. How have we sinned???

Still the snow that did fall worked an amazing transformation on the hill. Rocks and gravel went back into hiding and up in the bowls it often seemed there must be more new than reported. Perhaps due to the wind there were lots of pockets of boot deep that slid by most agreeably. True the hard stuff underneath was all too evident in places and transitions from scraped hard to fluffy soft were common. Still almost everything was a pleasure to ski and the trees were particularly nice, in marked contrast to the unfriendly conditions yesterday.

We spent almost all our time on the new side as the Bear Chair had technician looking folks hanging about and it stopped a couple of times on our one ride. When we returned to the bottom to find it stopped again, we opted to give it a pass, although I regreted not getting to sample Cedar Bowl.

I found it rather chilly up top today although it is only -11 C at the house as I write this a little after seven in the evening. The sky is starless and presumably cloudy.


Everything was open except for the Face Lift, which of course meant it was particularly inviting looking.

Timber Bowl from the top of the Timber Express. The White Pass chair runs up to left.

I was coerced down Heartland for only the second time this season and while it still had its share of scraped boiler plate, it was quite skiable and my boards escaped without injury.

The upper Highline area was quite tasty

Powder in the glades is hard to beat.