Craig's Report - February 24, 2006

Return of the Griz

After about a three week absence, the Griz eased back into the job with a few flakes earlier in the week and then got serious yesterday with an 18 cm deposit by this morning, Mix in some sunshine and a just nicely frosty morning and you have the makings of some seriously fine sliding. An added treat was that everything was open and because the Face Lift and Cedar High Traverse had been closed yesterday, there were particularly sweet treats over on Snake.

While the snow wasn�t always deep enough to isolate you from the previous surface and of course got somewhat scraped off in high traffic areas, generally the turning was soft and easy. Needless to say there were lots of smiles on the hill and it would have been tough to find anyone who wasn�t enjoying themselves. Indeed yesterday and today it started to actually seem a bit like reading week season, with some modest lineups in the morning, although these had largely disappeared by lunch.

I was impressed with how well the conditions held up during our little snow drought. With the return of our normal ample base depths, there was of course no concern about quantity of snow we were skiing on, but one might have expected much icier surfaces to develop than in fact occurred. It did get firm enough to start to give consideration to where you might slide to if you fell on steeper terrain, but as long as you could keep the boards under you, the grip was good.

The Weather Elf deserves a gold fig leaf for having the only weather report I saw to correctly predict yesterday�s snow. While some others suggested some light snow fall was possible, on Tuesday the Elf boldly predicted the 18 cm and missed the timing by only a few hours. Alas although he is now predicting more snow on Sunday, he is also murmuring about a risk of rain on Friday. Hopefully he will only be half right this time.

Speaking of weather, at 14:45, it is -3 C at the house under a partly cloudy sky.


The delights of Snake await on the far side of Cedar Bowl.

The Meat Hook (Face Lift) was particularly popular this morning, but as almost always, hardly seemed worth it to me with so many other delights available.

The gully between Freeway and China Wall is barely recognizable without its former obstacles and with the sub gully on the skiers left all but filled in.

The ridge part of Steep and Deep, which lamentably shares the name with what I consider Steep and Deep proper even though it isn�t really all that steep. In any event it was sweet today.

My daughter enjoying the boot high in a shot from the same location.

On Cedar Ridge, looking down towards the bottom of the Haul Back.

Sunnyside was, well sunny. Although generally soft, it did have the odd slick spot to add zest to your run.

The moguls in the trees beside Puff seem to be starting to mutate badly.

Obligatory shot of Currie Bowl from the top of White Pass.

Polar Peak looked inviting and had a steady stream of folks heading up and sliding back down.