Monkey

We spent the week at Whistler and rode Monday thru Friday. Overall, there wasn’t much new snow, but the quality of what was there from about mid-mountain up was really quite nice. It stayed nice and cold in the alpine the entire week, so the snow stayed soft. Wednesday was most excellent: sunny and calm, and what new snow they did have had been blown smooth by the wind the night before. The Peak chair on Whistler was the word of the day and we had many fresh turns. Good times. The other days were a mix of sunbreaks and clouds, with the clouds hitting the mountain in different spots. Coverage is very good pretty much everywhere on both mountains down to the bottom. The lower mountain refroze every night, so you had to wait for the sun to hit it and soften it again before it was worth it… I took Peak to Creek at the end of most days so it was slush by the time I hit the bottom each time. Who really rides the lower mountain there anyway beyond that? The sun came out again for me on Friday and my last run from the peak back to the room was perfect.

We stayed in the First Tracks Lodge in Creekside again, and as usual is was very nice. We ended up in an end unit this time and it was huge. We’re pretty sure it was bigger than our first few apartments The new Peak to Peak gondola made getting to Blackcomb from Creekside wonderful. We left the car parked the entire week, and we rode Blackcomb more than we have in the past. We rode in one of the “glass bottom” gondolas on one trip. I was a little disappointed… I was expecting the entire floor to be clear, but it’s just a small section in the middle, which I suppose is more practical.

I went to Crystal today with Bill. NWAC telemetry said they had 14″ in the last 24 hours, and I’d say it was fairly accurate. Better yet, it accumulated well below freezing… below 10F or so. The high temp up top while we were there was 18F. It was super light and fluffy all day, and fairly fantastic. We had an excellent day. Many fresh tracks were had, even late into the day. We lapped Sunnyside for a bit under Rex, then headed over to Northway and proceeded to find joy on every run. We finished up with a run down Exterminator where I found a few untracked turns in the trees. The place was pretty crowded, but we still found lots of solitude on Northway except for a brief period when the lift line got stunningly huge (see the last picture). Where the hell did all of those people come from? I’ve never seen it anywhere near that big. Luckily they didn’t come back, and the line disappeared again like usual. The second pic shows the late morning goods still waiting for us. The little bit of yellow blur in the cloud of pow is Bill.

Squaw was a real mixed bag this trip in terms of weather and snow conditions, but on the whole we came away super-happy, which is par for the course at this place. From the 25th thru the 27th we went from so-so to pure crap to awesome, and ended on the high note.

Wednesday the 25th was windy again, with a lot of the mountain closed early in the morning. They eventually opened up the Funitel and Shirley Lake, so Helen and I went up and had a good time lapping the mellow Shirley Lake runs. Eventually they opened up Granite Chief and I got right up there to find lots of very nice untracked powder. The area had been closed for a couple of days at that point, and it’s a bit more sheltered from the high wind that really packed the snow elsewhere on the mountain. There were many excellent runs with untracked anywhere from 6-8″ deep. Not super deep nor super light, but excellent all the same. Once the area was pretty much tracked out I called it day.

Thursday the 26th was horrible. Only KT-22, Red Dog, and Squaw Creek were running. Helen and I went up Red Dog and took just 3 runs before packing it in. The wind was amazing, and the gusts were nuts sometimes, causing everyone to hunker down and shield their faces from the ice pellets driven by the wind. Ouch. We, uh, didn’t lose any money on the day, though due to a super-nice guy cutting us a break… I’ll leave it at that to protect the innocent.

Friday the 27th: ahhh… the reason I love Squaw. Really, this place is excellent on the right kind of day. Bluebird, pretty much everything open, and fresh snow everywhere. Little to no wind, and almost everything you could see (98%) you could take a lift to and ride without hiking in or out. All of the pictures here are from Friday. Helen and I got up early and got in line for the Funitel before it opened. The line drained fast and we were up on the Gold Coast in no time. We lapped the Gold Coast Express a few times for some low-angle untracked, since everyone goes to the steeper stuff in a frenzy on a pow day there. Then we moved over to Siberia Express and helped track up Siberia Ridge and Bowl, which was an extraordinary amount of fun. The Palisades were looking sweet so I went for a hike and took a line down Main Chute that was most excellent, with soft wind-packed snow all the way down, and super-high-speed turns down into the bowl. I really should have done it again, but I’m in terrible shape for hiking these days. Eventually Helen’s ankle got the best of her and she went it. I stayed out and took more laps on Siberia then moved to the Headwall Express. Sun Bowl, The Slot, Cornice II Bowl, headwall Face, and North Bowl all held excellent snow even though it was all tracked up by this point. Finally, before my legs went to complete jello, I went for one last KT-22 run and went down under the Olympic Lady double, which I’ve never seen run, back to the bottom.

All-in-all, 4 days at Squaw and two of them were fantastic. In those two days alone I clocked 39 runs and 48,970 feet of vertical, most of it some damn fine snow. The other two days amounted to about a third of that.

The drive was excellent both ways, too… either I’ll make a separate post on that, or Helen will. Helen has a post with some of the drive down here: http://www.frygirl.com/frygirlblogs/?p=204

Finally, major kudos to the PlumpJack Squaw Valley Inn, which is right in the village next to the tram house. We’ve stayed there before, and we enjoyed the stay again. Two cool things here: first, on Thursday night a ski club rolled in and decided to have a major party in the top-floor rooms that kept everyone awake until just past 1pm. I talked to them, others talked to them, security talked to them, and although it took them longer than I would have liked to resolve the problem, they comp’d us the room for that night without us even asking ($269 + tax). Nice. Second, even though we’d reserved the room for the week we were able to check out a day early without penalty (we wanted to explore more on the drive home). The breakfast buffet each morning was again the shiznizzle, and I’m sure we’ll stay there on our next visit.