Condtion report and soap box entry number two!
The drought is finally over! After a slow and seriously dry start to the season things have finally turned around and conditions are deep albeit very touchy when it comes to the stability. The resorts have been skiing splendidly this week and the crowds were minimal generally speaking. Here's a visual condition report from Sunshine Village.
Screen grab shot with the MUVI HD
Skiing conditions have certainly improved in the last few days, with 85 cms so far and another 40 on it's way it's safe to say mother nature has hit the reset button but our uncrowded slopes would soon be overrun by holiday skiers visiting for the Family day long weekend. Saturday we headed off for whiter pastures and opted for a tour on the Icefields parkway on highway 93N located just north of Lake Louise. The avalanche bulletin was reading as HIGH across all elevations for the forecast region, we would have to stick to simple terrain during our outing, bummer! As we passed the Lake Louise ski area there was a 5 kilometer line of cars lined up for the resort ( seriously )with many more vehicles to follow suite shortly and just like that we felt much better about our decision.
11Kicking our way across the flats
With the new snow we wanted to have a look at what the snowpack was doing with this new load and warmer temperatures. We found that the storm snow wasn't playing nice with the two surface hoar layers from January. Then we looked at what seems to the be the only constant in continental snowpacks. Some dirty, square , huge depth hoar.
Kevin breaks trail
Zach had some other issues. Nothing duct tape , a shoelace and some zip ties won't fix.
After a quick lunch break we chatted about the conditions and what we should be skiing with the conditions we had, It was quite obvious that anything steep and open was out of the question. We had some deep snow below us with plenty of little pillows , little cliffs and well glades trees but most of all we were comfortable with our choice of terrain. 3...2...1..drop.
Tree skiing here is as good as it gets in the Rockies
Tasty
Enter white room.
Always good to look back up at your mountain squiggles
Good times were had with good people and although this is considered to be a pretty popular area it seems people only chose to ski the classic way own, too bad for them! If you haven't yet, for the love of everything holy get out there! After all who knows, it may be another two months after this storm leaves us before we get snow again.
