December 15, 2000

Welcome back Griz! We sure missed ya.

It, was cold and blowing this morning. The driving conditions were rotten and there were multiple trips to town to be made. You would think our kid errand weary van would surely know the way to town by itself now, but the driveway first had to be relieved of 20 to 25 cm of light fluffy snow. Light fluffy snow!!! What a wonderful day! :-)

The hill looks much better now and if the light powder snow was not ideal base building material, it sure seemed to paint lots of silly grins on the faces of those who had walked up to the top to sample it. Being much less ambitious I chose to just wander up to the top of Deer for a bit of exercise and to check out how the XC stuff worked in the new snow. I soon learned that breaking trail all the way up in almost knee deep snow can give you more exercise than intended and then on the descent I discovered that learning to telemark might be a good idea. :-)

The snow was luscious though and at least in the absence of hoards of scraping skis and boards, it seemed generous enough to keep one up off of most of the nasties. It has stopped snowing now, but another system with heavier, wetter (in this case good) snow is predicted shortly and the ski hill is now saying that opening day will be next Wednesday. I have it from a very reliable and hype free source that unless the forecasts go bust, this is indeed likely to be the case, although they probably will only open the old side for now.

Now let's just hope Griz has returned for good and wasn't just passing through.

My backyard this morning easily passed the loaded rail goodness test.

Lower Siberia ridge with a couple of tracks for decoration.

Currie Bowl from the top of Meadow.

Incline still had the odd twig sticking out, but looked very nice in its flat kind of way.

I have no idea what the status of the new Bear Chair is, but it looks complete and I see the load test barrels are stacked by the base.

Elk and the Elk Chair from near the base of the new Bear Chair.