Craig's Report - February 20, 1998

Same Old, Same Old

I headed out this afternoon for a rare weekday ski with my wife Chris.   It was 5C, so it seemed like it would be pretty soft, but at Bear we were met with large ice and uncontrolled slide warnings.  This suggests it was pretty icy this morning, but  the extra emphasis was probably prompted by this accident on the Bear T-Bar that I came across yesterday afternoon.  I heard a rumour that one of the people had to be evacuated to a larger center for treatment.  Here's hoping that it wasn't too serious and they recover quickly. Remember folks act quickly to stop yourself if you fall on an icy slope.

The T-Bar line was still slick today, but despite the warnings the off trail stuff had all softened nicely by the time we got to it.  This snowboarder at the top of the Face Lift seems to be contemplating the many possibilities.

We decided to head over to Red Tree and found the snow quite soft if a little bit sticky.  Here my wife negotiates a traverse across the face of Snake Ridge.  The line we took down Red Tree has lots of moguls, but they were pretty friendly.  The relatively unskied flats at the lower skier's left were a bit like skiing in toffee, but otherwise it was all pretty good given the lack of any real new snow.

The Cedar Ridge moguls were somewhat larger, but provided sure footed grip and generally reasonable contours.  North Ridge was a cruising delight, although it started to get a bit sticky at the bottom late in the day.

A regular on the chair had said that lower Cedar Main was getting pretty bare and needed snow soon.  We went to have a look and sure enough the few scratchy spots I had seen yesterday had grown.  I tried to position myself to get a picture that would look suitably alarming, but the truth is there was so little to see I just couldn't get an impressive shot.  Despite this small area, on a rather large slope, overall coverage was still excellent even with the mild weather.

Our exit run was down Sunnyside and Freeway.  Yesterday Sunnyside had been excellent, so I was surprised to find it just a tad crunchy in spots today.  This is picky in the extreme as it was still generally soft and carvable.  Freeway had the inevitable pointy moguls and bits of foliage sticking up, but was soft enough to be easily navigated, although this opinion definitely was not shared by some folks I heard grumbling as they put their skis on down at the cat track. (Note from Chris: Due to differing skiing styles and areas skied, I found Sunnyside more difficult with large imposing moguls with scrapey backsides. But I made it down in one piece and probably had more fun then the guy hanging upside down in the alders on the centre steep portion.)

In the snowboarder's half pipe we found this new gizmo sculpting the banks.  I don't know if this is a permanent toy or just a demo, but I suspect the half pipe crowd will be pleased if it stays.

At 5:15 PM it is about 3C at the house under a mainly gray sky.  The odd flake did drop this afternoon, but it proved to just be a tease.