March 16, 2002

An Excellent Day

It is rough being the resident curmudgeon these days as old Griz is making it very hard to find anything to complain about. For instance he dumped 25 cm of new high quality powder on top of yesterday's already excellent conditions and that doesn't leave much room in the grumbling department. Amazingly they were able to open everything except the Face lift so thigh deep delight was abundant and the only problem was making sure you had enough slope for the depth. Indeed today was certainly one of the best days of what has been a pretty good year.

Even after digging deep into my grumpy bag, all I can come up with is the observation that in a few spots (parts of Gorbi and 1,2,3) the wind had degraded the snow somewhat, but even then the snow was still very good and near perfect turns weren't far away.

At 16:00 it is -9 C with the sun dimly showing through a light overcast. Not bad for the second half of March. Spring is dead, long live Winter! :-)



Deep and sweet on Snake.

Note that the tracks on Blueberry are pretty straight - more pitch was needed for this much snow.

However the tree band of the Gorbi Bowl/Extreme Hazard run has plenty of pitch. Not a place to contemplate falling, but I discovered a couple of turns later that if you do, it can be very exhilaratingly. :-)

Looking back up Gorbi from the same spot.

Looking toward Anaconda from 1,2,3. Above had been a bit wind packed, but from here down was pure delight.