September 23, 2001

A Perfect Hiking Day

The title certainly fits, but I'm sure I must have used it before on some report. Indeed with little in the way of construction or modifications on the hill, there isn't much to report on except the scenery, and while it is most definitely lovely on a day like today, mountains don't generally undergo major annual changes. Indeed it occurs to me that I could probably recycle pictures and text from previous fall reports with little risk of anyone noticing. :-)

Today's outing began as a family hike up into Currie Bowl, but it was such a nice day that when the troops faded at the top of Trespass Trail, I decided to wander on myself. I had no real destination in mind, but there seemed little reason to stop and I eventually found myself up on the top of Polar Peak. Even there it was comfortable in shorts and a tee shirt, although not so warm as to be oppressive on the uphill grind. Of course the view up top is always great and my poor images do it no justice at all.

I have noticed a few minor changes on the hill recently, most noticeably the installation of a fence across the bottom of Currie Bowl that will direct all exiting traffic over onto lower Diamond Back. This is an excellent idea in my humble opinion. Mixing high speed, but not necessary high skill, traffic from Currie with toddlers trying out their shiny new snow plows on Meadow was just a recipe for eventual disaster.

I also noticed some minor land scraping work had been done beneath the White Pass chair around bottom of Heartland, but it was hard to see what, if any, effect it would have on skiing in that area. There appears to have been some alder whacking done on Linda's run and maybe on the KC chutes and probably other spots. However I think generally the big change everyone is hoping for this year is a return to traditional Fernie snow.

On pretty days I always take more pictures than I can use, so I have a separate page with more pictures

At a little past eight P.M., it is clear, calm and about 15 C.