Craig's Report - February 23, 1999


Sugar Skiing

Picture 1
(Upper Cedar Bowl)

That was my neighbor Isabel's assessment of the snow and it was pretty apt. When I went to bed last night about 12:30 it was snowing, but the temperature was an ominous 1 C. This morning the snow in the yard was a bit crusty and I heard it rained in town, but the hill itself seemed to escape unscathed. There was about 10 or 15 centimeters of that sugar and in most places it was sort of stuck together to make a somewhat dense but still soft ride.

 


(Looking down Steep & Deep

Exposed South facing slopes were firmer and less forgiving of little glitches in technique, while North facing tree slopes were the smoothest flowing.

The snow on groomed runs was generally very good, although the skiing at lower elevations in places the groomers had missed was a tad lumpy. I heard complaints on the chair about the icy conditions on Puff, so I did a transit run down it on the way to White Pass. It wasn't as bad as I imagined, but there certainly were lots of sizable patches of boiler plate separating the dense soft moguls.

 

Picture 1
(Looking up Currie from the South Ridge)

The dense soft snow made for excellent exploring conditions and I managed several runs down bits I had never been down before, including one in Cedar.

Usually when Currie is open and conditions are soft, I end up heading right into the bowl from the top of White Pass, but Isabel had said there was good skiing from the ridge into Currie, so I resisted the urge and took the traverse through Timber and out onto the ridge. Sure enough there was some lovely tree skiing, with pitches range from steep to ridiculous. Good conditions and route planning are well advised.

 


 


(Bootleg Glades)

Farther down you can continue your steep bark gnawing in Bootleg glades. These guys have some nice fairly open areas, but a couple of these vaguely resembled steep half pipes and thus get scraped clean by boarders almost instantly. By choosing some of the denser and steeper sections I got fresh snow and an appreciation for the appropriateness of the double black rating.

 

The day started out with bright sunshine, but by about 11:00 am it had clouded over. At 2:30 PM it is 0 C at the house and it has just started to snow.

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